


World War Z: The Lost Interviews

by PatricktheFan



Category: World War Z - Max Brooks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2019-06-06 02:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 43,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15185000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatricktheFan/pseuds/PatricktheFan
Summary: A Mexican doctor. A British police sergeant. A Vietnamese politician. These individuals, as well as other men and women, tell their tales from the zombie war, in this series of interviews that was thought to be lost forever. I do not own World War Z; all credit goes to the genius of Max Brooks.





	1. Aztlan (Blame)

**I've wanted to do something like this for a while, as I feel that while Max Brooks did a great job covering multiple perspectives from seemingly all walks of life, I feel like there are some countries or perspectives that would've made the book even better. Throughout this poorly written fic, we will revisit a few locations already in the book such as the United States and the Holy Russian Empire, but we will also visit some new locations such as Argentina, Vietnam, Great Britain, and Aztlan (formerly known as Mexico in the book), just to name a few! I've tried my best to make these as historically accurate as possible, and have also tried to keep these chapters as closely tied to the novel's universe as possible.**

**Also, I'll be posting these chapters in chronological order as the book, as many of these chapters take place during different time frames in the book (for instance, this first one takes place during the second chapter "Blame", while others take place during chapters such as "The Great Panic" and "Around the World, and Above". I'll be sure to add a parentheses at the end of the chapter names so those who have read the book know what section it takes place in. I've decided to write them at different parts in the story because the majority of the World War Z fics I've read take place during "Around the World, And Above", but I digress.**

**And one last thing: as with everything else, I (unfortunately) do not own World War Z.** **All credit goes to the genius of Max Brooks, and these chapters are not for monetary gain, but rather for the entertainment of myself and others.**

**Be sure to read, review, and comment. So with all that being said, I hope y'all enjoy!**

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**CANCUN, YUCATAN PENINSULA, AZTLAN**

**[Cancún continues to attract many tourists each year with its pearly beaches, authentic cuisine, and slightly hedonistic partying. Although the latter is experiencing decline, thanks in part to the government's national crackdown to impose "decency". However, I do not have the privilege of interviewing Doctor Roberto Garcia-Ramirez on the beach. Instead, I sit inside Doctor Garcia-Ramirez's office on the second floor of the Hospital Galenia. Due to the damage the infrastructure has suffered from the recent hurricane, power within the city and surrounding areas are only given limited amounts of power. As a result, the air conditioning is barely functioning, which makes us both sweat, but thankfully not profusely. Going against hospital protocol, he lights up a slightly crumpled cigarette.]**

Mexico had a lot on its plate when the shit hit the fan. Drugs, corruption, a relatively high homicide rate. So to state that our country was one of the worst hit countries on this side of the Atlantic is putting it in simple terms. Not only were the dead rising a national issue, but the drug cartels scattered across the country, especially the ones closer to the northern border, also made handling the crisis during both the early stages and the _Gran Pánico_ even more difficult. But thankfully most of them were wiped out during the Panic and the stalemate years, so I guess you can say that's one good thing that came out of it.

For most nations, they were under the assumption that the virus was a strain of "African rabies". To us, our ignorant belief was that it was our drug problem causing the crisis. Well...at first, anyway.

My brother, God rest his soul, worked for _Los Federales_ in Coahuila, where he conducted dozens of drug busts every year, in cooperation with the authorities in Texas. He worked for them for thirteen years before becoming a border guard on the Arizona border. He had seen many things throughout his career, ranging from people trying to cross the border in suitcases, to people trying to sneak in narcotics that they kept in the same place that the Jews has to sneak in valuables into concentration camps in World War II. We would talk on the phone at least once a week, where our conversations would range from him discussing whatever crazy fiasco that happened at the border station that week, to personal things like what he was doing with his family that weekend or something like that.

At that time, we didn't know what was happening in China, or other parts of the world for that matter, so when reports were being made about people attacking our border guards like mad men, most of us just assumed the people attacking were just high on whatever homemade narcotic that they were trying to smuggle across the border.

_**Care to elaborate further?** _

These kinds of things had been the norm for Mexico since the 1970s, when Escobar broke a deal with Mexican traffickers after his Caribbean and South Florida routes were dismantled by an intensified police presence. Although the drug war didn't "begin" until 2006, narcotics is something we have been dealing with for decades.

But keep in mind that the first reports that came in were from the border areas, and many drug busts had been happening around that time frame. We were just under the assumption that those vile animals had created something so potent that it was making people act more insane than the crudest meth or heroin ever could. So potent that they were immune to both bullets and pepper spray. So can you really blame us for not realizing the truth?

_**But wasn't that theory disproven when autopsies were performed and the reports were released?** _

Sure they released the reports, but all that was said was that the victims had been viciously mauled. And all the television said at the time was that border tensions were getting worse, but that the government was "handling it".

_**And they said nothing when these border guards or civilians reanimated?** _

**[The doctor doesn't answer my question directly. Instead, he continues with his previous monologue.]** They didn't know what to make of the zombies that had been killed, as they didn't have a single trace of drugs in their systems. They tried to keep things under wraps, so...

_**But the theory was eventually disproven?** _

Oh of course! People could rest easy knowing that their country's reputation was still in the same spot and not worse. But now that fear was replaced by "African rabies", following the outbreak in South Africa... **[He changes the subject abruptly.]** I still can't believe that our police, or even our military, weren't able to at least maintain half of their ranks when the reclamation was put into action. I mean, even when it came to dealing with the lowest ranking drug gang, they looked like they were ready for all-out war: head-to-toe riot gear, high-powered assault rifles and shotguns, tear gas. But if Yonkers was any indication, our military and police suffered virtually identical unpreparedness and losses.

_**Didn't you receive any news from your brother regarding the incidents?** _

Oh yes, I did, and he kept me informed just like he did everything else. But it was nothing regarding the true nature of the virus. He was just as confused as everyone else was. I remember this one time, he told me of an incident that happened at his station:

They had stopped a van to conduct a drug search. They had dogs with them to sniff out any drugs that might have been hidden. Both dogs starting barking their heads off once they neared the rear of the van, but it wasn't because they found any drugs, but rather the man that was tied up in the trunk. They had their hands and feet wrapped in duct tape, with a dirty cloth gagging them. One of his men removed the cloth from the man's mouth, and immediately felt the man bite down on his hand, ripping off a few of his fingers. My brother, always quick on his feet, withdrew his gun and shot it in the head, almost on reflex. He then told me that the guard that was bitten was hauled away to a hospital, but was never heard from again. As for the two men trying to sneak him across the border, they were immediately hauled away for questioning.

_**Can you please describe to me your personal experience?** _

Calm down, _gringo_ , I'm getting to that. I had graduated from _La Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara_ in 2003. I then moved to a relatively nice apartment in the city to begin my practice. At the time, our country's health care was not in the best shape, as we had not yet established universal health care. Sure, we had the appropriate equipment and medicine to accomplish this, but many Mexicans only had access to the basics. But even after the government implemented _El Seguro Popular_ **[1]** , the majority of the population still did not have the most advanced medical care until around the Great Panic began to set in.

Like our neighbor to the north, we were completely ignorant of the threat that was creeping around the corner. Phalanx had been issued in great numbers all across the country, in keeping with the NAFTA **[2]** treaty. The people were perfectly fine with taking the vaccine; malaria had been going down in the country when the new universal health care was put into place, so the public was more than willing to take another shot, this time to avoid catching the "African rabies".

And it really didn't help that the cartels were trying to make a quick buck off of it too. Whenever they couldn't get their vile hands on the real thing, they resorted to trying to make crude versions of it, and began administrating it to their members and clients. Many Mexicans were slaughtered by the dead, but just think of all the young Mexicans who died as a result of this false sense of security, most of them dying as a result of the crude drug not cooperating with their immune system. And that's not including the ones who had successfully managed to sneak people in the United States to seek American medical treatment for their bite wounds **[3]**. It was bad enough that Phalanx didn't do shit in stopping the virus, but the poorly-made Mexican knockoff and human trafficking just made our death toll worse.

I myself was especially sure we would be safe. With so many people around me freaking out over this new bug going around, I was confident that we wouldn't have to deal with it. With that new miracle drug, and our newly implemented health care system, why should we have to worry? Oh how foolish was I...

 **[He finishes his cigarette, dumping the butt into an empty metal pen holder on his desk.]** I distinctly remember the first patient that was rushed to the emergency room. He was a young man, nineteen according to his records, and had obtained a hideous bite on his left forearm. It looked like some animal had torn away so much flesh that you could see a little bit of bone. The wound was leaking a mixture of blood and some sort of black ooze that looked like pus. He was sweating profusely and was beginning to lose the color of his face. We followed all the basic procedures: we asked for his name, where did he live, and all that protocol shit. Unfortunately, he was in too much pain to respond so we had to pull his information from his driver's license. His name was Gabriel Enrique Fontina.

I determined that he would have to have his arm amputated, so I had one of my resident nurses fetch me the tools necessary for the procedure. But during said procedure, after I had just cut through the bone, he flatlined. I tried chest compressions and even mouth-to-mouth, but it proved futile. I pronounced him dead at 9:32 PM.

More and more patients began to fill up the rooms, and before long, we were forced to move patients into the hallways. Yes, there were that many people who had been attacked! My coworkers and I didn't know what to think of it. The majority of the patients, like the first one, didn't have the energy to answer any of our questions, and the ones that could speak did so only in broken Spanish. More kept coming, and by the time midnight rolled around, we had over sixty bitten people under our care. Most of their bite wounds weren't horrible enough to require amputation, but that did not change the fact that it was still an unpleasant sight. We had so many new patients that, believe it or not, we eventually ran out of morphine. When some of them had been stabilized, we were able to get some answers from them.

I remember I was tending to a middle-aged woman. She was banged up pretty bad; large chunks taken out of both arms, the top half of her left ear missing, and her clothes and face smeared with both blood, and that same strange black pus I saw in Señor Fontina's wound. The morphine had kicked in and she started answering some questions. She said that the "devils" came from nowhere and everywhere at once, preying upon anyone and everyone.

It was then that everything started going downhill. First one of my colleagues, Doctor Sanchez, called me into the adjacent room; one of the patients had flatlined. Doctor Sanchez tried chest compressions, but it was to no avail. He leaned in to tried to hear any breathing, but then...the patient bit him, right in the neck. I ran over to my coworker, and tried to pull him from the man, but the patient had an iron grip. I had to call for help, so a young nurse came in, and after a struggle, we succeeded in removing Sanchez from the patient. Sanchez fell to the floor, clutching his bloody neck and gasping for air as he began to choke on his own blood. As the nurse tried to stabilize him, I glanced over to the patient, and he had sat up, trying to reach out to me. I fled the room, abandoning the nurse and Sanchez. **[He looks down, clearly in regret.]**

I made it to the hallway, and saw that others were beginning to reanimate. One had fallen off his gurney and was gnawing at a nurse's ankle, while another one had stumbled out of his room, his gown stained with that same black gunk. I look into the room across from me and I see the now undead patient tearing into his crying wife's arm. I look to my right and see another doctor wrestling with one of them, while another doctor was trying to pry one zombie off of one of the resident doctors.

I ran to my left, pushing past a colleague that was holding his bleeding arm. Before I could make it to the desk at the end of the corridor, one of them emerged from the corner, letting out a horrendous growl. I blocked it by pushing my arm against its neck, but it succeeded in ripping the sleeve on my lab coat. I darted my eyes, and spotted a cart of instruments next to the wall. I grabbed a scalpel and jammed it into its neck. The only thing I got out of that was my glove-covered hand being drenched in that black pus. Have you ever smelt that stuff? Honestly, it smells worse than anything you can imagine. When this didn't work, my adrenaline made me remove the blade and drive through its forehead, just above the right eye. With that, the thing stopped moving and released me, collapsing to the blood-stained tiled floor. I made a run for the double doors past the desk, when I turned back one last time to see Señor Fontina. He was tearing into the stomach of one of the patients on the gurneys when I ran out the double doors.

The elevator wouldn't come up fast enough, and another dead one tried to grab me, so I said, "Fuck it" and ran for the stairwell. After practically running down the stairs and entering the lobby, I saw more dead ones than the floor above. The security guard, Marco, was shooting into the stomach of one that was coming at him. He must have wasted eight bullets before the woman lunged at him and sunk her teeth into his cheek. I dropped the scalpel I was holding and grabbed Marco's gun that he had dropped on the floor when he was bit. I ran out the front doors in a hurry, killing two more of those things and pushing away a few others as I ran for my car. The shitty thing wouldn't start, but eventually came to life after the fourth or fifth time. I backed out, and drove like a madman, hitting my fair share of dead ones along the way. I could barely see with all the black gunk staining my windshield and headlights, but I somehow made it out of the parking lot and onto the main road.

_**Where did you plan on going?** _

I didn't know, and I didn't care. I just had to get as far away from the hospital, as far away from Guadalajara, as possible. This was the beginning of the city's descent into madness, and I really didn't want to be a part of it. Call me a coward if you'd like, but I didn't want to stick around when the police were overrun. I tried calling my brother multiple times, but the lines were jammed; too many people trying to use their phones at the same time. Even when I got out of the city, I kept trying and trying and trying to contact him, hoping to hear his voice pick up on the other end. I must have left like a thousand messages; I would keep my phone on at all times, just by the off-chance I would hear that familiar ringtone. My brother's ringtone never rang again... [ **He looks at a picture on his desk. It's a picture of him in his youth, standing next to the man I assume is his brother. They appear to be standing outside some sort of federal building. His brother is dressed in his border guard attire, while the doctor is dressed in civilian clothes. Both wear smiles on their faces, their arms around each other's shoulders. I notice that the doctor is trying really hard to fight back tears.]**

Little did I know that other cities across the country were beginning to experience nearly identical incidents. Acapulco, Monterrey, Chihuahua, Ciudad Juárez, and even _el capital_...

So to wrap this up, if you're wondering who do I blame for what happened to our country, I place the blame on three things: the government for not doing their job of protecting us and keeping us informed, the cartels and gangs for their role in trafficking and the Phalanx-knockoff, and the rest of us for believing that shit was under control.

**[He reaches into his bottom desk drawer and removes a small glass and a bottle of tequila, filling up the glass halfway. He shoots me a look when he notices my reaction.]**

You didn't see the cigarette, and you certainly didn't see this, _comprende_? **[He downs the entire glass in one gulp.]**

**[1]- El Seguro Popular (Popular Health Insurance) was the medical program implemented in 2004 by the Mexican government in order to offer medical assistance to the less financially fortunate.**

**[2]- NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, was a pre-war treaty that established a trilateral trade bloc between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The agreement was first signed on January 1st, 1994.**

**[3]- According to both pre-war and post-war records, most of the first cases reported in the American Southwest were Mexican immigrants, as well as a small handful of immigrants from Central America.**


	2. England (Blame)

**And here we have the next chapter! This one is slightly shorter than the previous chapter, but I think it turned out good. As always, read, review, and like the story. Enjoy!**

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**KENT, ENGLAND, UK**

**[I stand near the edge of the White Cliffs of Dover with retired police sergeant Malcolm Briggs, not too far from the South Foreland Lighthouse. The scenery truly is beautiful, the sun shining down on the waves of the English Channel while a small group of seagulls flies overhead. Mr. Briggs walks with a limp, and has done so since the reclamation of Britain. But Mr. Briggs is not here to discuss that, and instead decides to focus this interview on his duties during the first major incident in England.]**

I worked as a Greater Manchester Police officer for only eleven years, and by the time the dead began rising here at home I had just been promoted to sergeant. The reason I joined is because I enjoyed helping others, and I guess you can say I was also a bit of a patriotic Brit. My grandfather had served in both World Wars, and if there's one thing that he taught me was that the greatest thing a man can do for his country is to serve it no matter what. So I grew up wanting to help my country in any way that I could. **[He chuckles.]** My mum said she would kill me if I joined the army, so I decided being a police officer was the next best thing.

I loved my job, and everything that came with it. I loved the people, I loved the uniform and the signature bobby helmet, I loved keeping the community safe and tranquil. Even when it came to dealing with the most mundane aspects of my career, like paperwork or being parked for several hours waiting for someone to break the speed limit, I still thought it was one of the best jobs in the world. I never worried about dying on the job. Compared to the US, violent crime was relatively low in the UK, so I wasn't really afraid of danger.

I always believed that after we were bombed to high hell during the Nazi Blitz, our country could not suffer another tragedy of such great magnitude. Well, sure we had the smog problem back in the mid-50s, but other than that, we were sitting pretty off the coast of Europe, detached from the possibility of falling under the Iron Curtain's cold, relentless embrace when it was still in existence.

While most island nations were spared massive onslaught, we were one of the most visited, and one of the most populated, countries in the European Union. So you can imagine what things were like; not only were the majority of our cities on the main island densely populated, but we also had the folks over in Northern Ireland to worry about. But looking back, those bloody bastards, both the Northern Irish as well as the Republic of Ireland, had it easy. Belfast didn't have to put up much of a fight, and neither did Dublin, but I'm getting off track.

 **[He pauses briefly.]** I apologize for those last two statements. I know that sounds a bit anti-Irish. But I want you to know that I have absolutely nothing against them; I admire their persistence, and I hold them in high respect for keeping the majority of their population alive during the war.

Well anyway, the first outbreaks in the homeland were minor. I'd say only about two or three incidents were reported in the rural areas, while ones in the urban ones were more common, but they were quickly taken care of. We didn't have secretive, covert operations like your American Alpha Teams. Almost very single government agency was focused on more "important" matters.

_**Such as?** _

Terrorism, for one thing. Like your 9/11, we were left devastated by our own attack on 7/7 **[1]**. Now of course, our death toll on that day was not, and can _never_ be compared to yours, we were still nonetheless in a state of fear. Fear of an enemy that we could not take out in one fell swoop. Fear of an enemy that could strike again at any moment, and so we had to be prepared for anything. But the "preparations" were merely tighter security in highly frequented public places. And of course we had the passing of the Terrorism Act in 2006, which created new offenses related to UK terrorism, but if you actually look at it, it was mainly about detention sentences.

Another thing we were to busy focusing on was trying to rebuild our economy after the Great Recession. Now, it wasn't just our own economy that we were trying to pull out of the loo, but we also had Iceland to deal with. They were one of the hardest hit countries in Europe, and things got so bad over there that they had protests in Reykjavik calling for certain officials to resign over corruption.

_**Why was the UK having to deal with Iceland?** _

Their banks couldn't refinance their debts to us and the Netherlands, and we sent officials from Her Majesty's Treasury to discuss the next course of action. Their collapsed banking sector had left multiple organizations in the UK with a loss of around one billion pounds. Yeah, one _billion_! It wasn't until the International Monetary Fund offered a 1.4 billion pound loan to Iceland that we were able to focus more on fixing our own economic crisis.

But before you ask, yes, the major outbreak that made the rest of the world look at our country occurred in Manchester.

I was conducting my early evening rounds when I received a call on my radio that there was a ruckus going on in the center of town on Princess Street, and that backup was needed. I brought along my deputy, Roger Fairfield, and went to investigate. When we arrived, three other squad cars were already on the scene. We saw a large crowd of people grouped together, with more gradually joining in. Some were shouting, some were taking pictures and videos with their phones, others were jut standing around as if they were just there to see what was going on. Two officers stood at opposite ends of the scene, redirecting traffic. When we walked past the barricades and police tape, I asked one of my fellow officers what the bloody hell was going on. He said that given the recent killings at the hands of us, the citizens were angry.

_**Did you ever have to carry out any killings?** _

Me personally? No, and neither did Fairfield. But I knew a few guys that did. Now, I personally didn't know what to think of what was happening here or anywhere else. All I heard was that law enforcement across the whole island were being mobilized to crush a new wave of "relentless violence" as a result of the "African rabies". The violence being committing by these people was so intense that they were resistant to both pepper spray _and_ tasers, so cops had to resort to beating them to death, which didn't really sit well with the civilians. Of course they didn't know that they were really zombies, so how did you expect them to react? What else were we supposed to do? It wasn't until after that night when I realized that things were a lot more complicated.

_**Was the crowd gathered just to protest the killings?** _

Partially, yes. But the main reason they had gathered there was because of a beating that occurred outside of the town hall. The same officer told me he had beaten the growler **[2]** to death, and that the protesters were accusing them of savagely killing an "unarmed civilian". I got a good look at the body; it was thin, a large chunk of its neck missing...Its head was bashed in, surrounded by a thick pool of that signature growler goo. An ambulance was already on the scene, with paramedics tending to two other people that apparently been attacked by the person that now lay dead on the pavement. The constable was also present at the scene. He held a megaphone in his hand, telling everyone to go home and that it was "official police business".

Another officer shouted; we all turned to see a couple of growlers shuffling towards us from behind. Fairfield and I ordered them to halt, but it was obvious they couldn't understand us. A few of the officers withdrew their tasers, while a few others, myself included, pulled out our batons and further ordered them to freeze. One of the growlers lunged at one officer, taking a bite out of his upper arm. This resulted in another cop shooting his taser at it, sending bolts of electricity through its body. When that didn't do anything, me, Fairfield, and two other officers ganged up on the two growlers, beating them with our batons.

The crowd...lost it. They broke through the barricades, and before long, the protest had devolved into a full-scale riot. I reached into my cruiser and frantically reached for the radio. I began blasting orders into the speaker, telling the dispatcher to send backup. She told me they had already been deployed, as they had been monitoring the protest and had a team on standby in case things turned real nasty. I threw the radio down and looked up in time to see Fairfield toss me a shotgun that we kept in the trunk. We only used it for extreme situations, and well, I guess Fairfield thought now was a good enough time as any.

I was hesitant about using it, though. I really didn't want to have to use it, but I had no other option at that moment. I fired it into the air, trying to get some of the rioters' attention. One or two hit the ground in fear, but besides them, it was useless; it was too loud, too many things going on at once. I chambered another round, but before I could shoot, a middle-aged man grabbed the barrel and tried to take it from me. He and I wrestled with it for a good five seconds before I overpowered him and bashed his face with the stock, sending him to the ground, clutching his now-broken nose.

It was chaos; cars on fire, people behaving like maniacs, windows of shops and cars being smashed, my colleagues being ganged up on. I saw one guy, probably no older than sixteen, on top of a white Mercedes-Benz wielding a revolver and shouting, "Anarchy in the UK!" before firing a couple of shots. I don't think anyone noticed when, out of nowhere, a few more growlers showed up. And that's not including the ones that had reanimated in the ambulance and attacked the paramedics tending to them.

I reached out to one woman, trying to pull her off of a younger woman, but when I got a look at her face, I realized it was one of them. I lost my balance and went falling backwards onto the road, the writhing zombie desperately trying to bite me. With her snapping jaws mere inches from my face, I could see her teeth were blood-stained,with little bits of flesh stuck between them. And that tell-tale black goo coming from both the bite wound on her shoulder and from her mouth...

Before she could sink her snapping jaws into me, someone pulled her off of me and threw her to the ground. It was Fairfield; he hoisted me to my feet, and we both ran for cover behind a parked van. It was then I saw the familiar armored vans of the AFO pull up across the way.

_**AFO?** _

Authorized Firearms Officers. They were the ones who handled all the minor outbreaks before Manchester. Before the war, most police officers in the UK didn't carry guns on their utility belts. The only exception was Northern Ireland, but that was because of the frequent Irish Republican dissidence. Sure, we usually kept like a shotgun or something in the trunk, as I mentioned just a moment ago, but unless you were officially registered to carry one and had the proper training, you only carried a baton, taser, and or pepper spray as your only means of defense.

They started by firing tear gas. Some of the rioters backed off, but were still causing havoc. The AFO then started to fire their submachine guns into the crowd. I'm thankful that they use rubber bullets when it comes to civil disturbances, because if they had used real ones, that would have just added more fuel to the fire. The rioters naturally began to resist, some attacking the riot-gear clad officers with clubs or whatever bludgeons they had on them, only to be knocked to the ground or shot with rubber bullets.

I turned to say something to my deputy, but he had vanished. I then heard a familiar scream not too far from me. I peeked my head around the van to see Fairfield; he had fallen to the ground, his hand covering his side. I ran over to him and saw that he had been stabbed, and his bleeding showed no signs of stopping.

I pulled him up and put my arm around him, carrying him through the street. Some rioters attempted to attack us, but I held them back with my pepper spray as we made our way into a cafe. I laid Fairfield in a booth; between breaths he said he left our cover to help an old woman that was being randomly assaulted and attempted to restrain the attacker when he was stabbed. I told the owner, who had been hiding in the back, to tend to my deputy while I returned to the chaos to help my fellow officers...

The riot was eventually broken up. Most of the protesters were arrested, others were taken to the hospital to be treated for various wounds that were sustained during the skirmish. And there's no denying that some of said wounds were bites. Fairfield miraculously pulled through in the end, but he didn't live to see VB Day **[3]**...

**[1]- July 7th, 2005. On this date, a series of suicide bombings occurred in London, that were primarily aimed at commuters using the city's public transportation system.**

**[2]- British slang for zombies during the war.**

**[3]- Victory in Britain Day.**


	3. Nevada, USA (The Great Panic)

**Before I start this short chapter, I want to say that this chapter is mostly filler, so don't expect anything too abstract. I feel like most of the sections in the Great Panic (such as the Alang, India and Topeka, Kansas) don't really have a huge impact on the overall story (with the exceptions of the Battles of Yonkers, the Iranian-Pakistani nuclear war, and the Russian decimations), so I believe that you can get really creative in this section (I wrote this chapter within 24 hours!). So with that being said, this is just something I thought I might throw in there just for kicks. Goes without saying: read, review, and like!**

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**LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, USA**

**[Michael K. Broben currently works as the manager for a very distinct and popular band here in the state. But before the Panic, he was nothing more but a frail college freshman without a care in the world. That is, until the undead descended on a party he was attending...]**

We never saw them coming. Like most cases, they just...came out of nowhere. I bet you get real tired of hearing that, don't you?

Let me start with some background info: I became acquainted with a junior named Kevin Langford. He was from Alpha Sigma Phi, and was a mutual friend of my roommate Jerry. On a Monday afternoon, Jerry and I were having lunch in the school cafeteria, when Kevin and a few of his fraternity brothers came up to us. He invited us to come to a party the fraternity was throwing that upcoming Thursday, to which we accepted. This was about four days before that reporter broke the news about Phalanx, so we were still under the impression that there was nothing to worry about.

However, I would occasionally hear people either in class, or on the quad, or in the cafeteria, including at that moment, discussing the virus in some way or another. "Hey, did you hear what happened in Atlanta yesterday?" "I did, but did you hear about that guy in Miami? He apparently took Phalanx, but he still got rabies!" "I saw on the news there was a riot in Manchester just yesterday! Cops killing innocent people for no reason!"

Eventually, the other two days passed by with no significance, and the day of the party had come. To put it simply, the party was off the wall; there was A LOT of drinking, and not to mention some heavy drug usage. At one point in the evening, I looked over to one of the couches in the living room and saw some guy taking a selfie with two cute blonde girls who were passed out. It was my first party, so needless to say, I went a little overboard with the dope and booze.

Unfortunately, I don't remember every single detail, given my drug/alcohol-induced state, but I distinctly remember I was upstairs in the bathroom, puking my guts out into the toilet. I felt like I needed to just call it quits and just go home. But then I remembered that I drove here, and I was pretty sure that hardly anybody was in the right state of mind to even drive a car in a straight line. So I decided to head into the adjacent bedroom and go to sleep, even if it meant waking up with a killer hangover. I stumbled over to the bedroom, but Jerry was in there, hooking up with some Asian girl. I definitely didn't want to stay and watch them so I decided to just sleep in the bathtub. I figured that would be the perfect place to be in case if I woke up and needed to throw up.

I don't know how long I was out, but I woke up suddenly. I pulled out my phone and saw that it was 5:28 in the morning. The alcohol was slowly starting to leave my system, but I was still a tad high. I was only high enough to have that sense of euphoria, but I was still cognizant of my surroundings. I quickly sat up in the tub, and my head started spinning after getting up so fast. I rubbed my head as I crawled out of the tub and opened the door to find one of Kevin's buddies on the floor, on top of a girl. _Oh splendid,_ I thought. _They couldn't find a room to fuck in?_ But even in my current state, I noticed something wasn't right. The girl was kicking and trying to scream. I thought the guy was trying to rape her, but his pants were still on.

I said, "Hey!" and tapped him on the shoulder, to which he turned to face me. His eyes were wild, his skin unnaturally pale, and the thing that really scared me shitless, was his blood-stained teeth, lips, and chin. With him facing me, I could get a better look at the girl; her entire right cheek had been eaten away, exposing all her teeth on that side. At first I thought that this was just some messed up hallucination from my excessive marijuana usage, but regardless, I was frozen where I stood. The guy then got up to his feet and immediately lunged for me.

I punched him on reflex, hitting him straight in the eye. He stepped back a few steps, but came at me again. My eyes darted to my right and saw a vase on a table. I picked it up and bashed the guy in the side of the face, the vase smashing to pieces. This time, he fell down the stairs, and I swore I could hear a few of his bones break. I heard more screams coming from down below. I ran down the stairs into the living room and saw three more of those things at different places in the room. One was on top of one of my classmates, Greg, while the other two had one of the cheerleaders pinned to the wall, tearing at her flesh as she cried in pain. One fraternity brother somehow had gotten a hold of a Glock and was trying to kill one zombie coming through the front door. The poor guy didn't get a head shot in time...

I looked up ahead, where I got a small view of the kitchen. I looked in time to see Jerry slash a zombie's throat with a kitchen knife. With that black gunk spilling all over its clothes, the zombie grabbed Jerry and brought his teeth down on his arm.

I wanted to help him, but my fear got the better of me. With a mixture of adrenaline and selfish fear now in full control, I fled back upstairs into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. I saw that the bathroom had a small window, so that served as my emergency exit. I tried to squeeze myself out the window, when I heard banging on the wooden door. I didn't know if it was a zombie or a person banging on it, but I didn't want to stay around to find out.

I collapsed onto the roof of the outdoor deck, but it was so dark I couldn't see the deck roof in front of me, so I ending up falling and scraping my head on the shingles. I could already feel the blood beginning to slide down my forehead, but I didn't care. I just had to get away from this place.

I stood up and I could see the entire side lawn. I could see a few students were trying to start their cars, and two of them actually rammed into each other while trying to escape! I could see about a dozen or so zombies shuffling across the grass, and looked to my left to see three zombies overpower a guy, bringing him to the ground as his screams were silenced. Thankfully, the deck roof wasn't too far up, so I was able to jump to the ground without breaking my legs. I ran as fast as my weak legs could carry me, pushing past two zombies along the way.

Once I reached my smart car, I stopped and gagged heavily. I tried to resist the urge to vomit, but I was too weak and threw up onto the grass. I glanced behind me to see two of them approaching me, so I hopped into my smart car and began to drive off the property. I almost had a heart attack when someone threw themselves in front of my car; it was Kevin. From what I could see, his clothes were ripped, and his bloody hand was covering that area of the body where the neck meets the shoulder. I could see blood, and what looked like some black stuff as well. He was trying to say something, as if he was begging for help, but I floored it and got out of there, leaving him behind. I looked in the rear view mirror to see him try to stumble away, only to collapse to his knees, and then fell flat onto the ground, apparently dead.

I drove like a madman back to my dorm. The place was surprisingly empty; there wasn't even an RA **[1]** at the front desk. It didn't take long for me to pack my stuff. I only packed the essentials: clothes, toiletries, a flashlight, and some snacks for the road. I booked it out of the dorm and fled campus faster than you can, "Touchdown."

_**Do you regret your hasty decision at the party? Regarding your friend, I mean?** _

**[He silently avoids eye contact. After a pause, he continues without answering my question.]**

Once I was on the highway, I began to calm down a bit. By the time the sun came up, the marijuana had left my system. It wasn't until 7:00 AM that I turned on the radio, hoping the morning news would inform me of what the hell was going on. It was then that I heard the words that sent the whole world into a downward spiral: "The drug Phalanx, which many Americans have been relying on to prevent catching the strain of African rabies, is nothing more but a placebo. The victims affected by this virus are not rabid, but are in fact, deceased persons that have returned to life."

**[Our interview is interrupted by the arrival of the frontman for the band Mr. Broben is managing. He's a tall man with short dark hair, and pokes his head in through the door.]**

Frontman: Yo Mike, we're ready for another take.

Mr. Broben: All right Dan! Give me a sec!

**[Dan exits the room, shutting the door behind him. Mr. Broben turns to me.]**

I apologize, but this interview is going to have to be cut short. I have to get back to work.

**[Mr. Broben rises from his chair, thanks me for coming, and exits the room, leaving the door ajar for me. As I pack my belongings, I can't help think about the band he's managing. Their pre-war songs "America" and "Ready Aim Fire", as well as the song "Warriors" which was produced during the war, served as inspiration for many Americans during the Road to New York. Honestly, what kind of band name is Imagine Dragons anyway?]**

**[1]- Residential Assistant.**

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**Okay, so I couldn't resist referencing my favorite band in there.**


	4. Egypt (The Great Panic)

**Goes without saying: read, review, and like!**

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**ISTANBUL, TURKEY**

[ **It's the lunch rush in the country's most populated city. But instead of meeting in a restaurant or café, I meet Mahmoud Badawy on an isolated beach bordering the Sea of Marmara. Born and raised in Egypt, he now resides here in Turkey, and has agreed to speak with me on his only day off this week. We sit in folding chairs on the warm sand. He offers me an orange soda out of his small cooler, to which I accept. After we toast and take a swig from our bottles, he begins his story.** ]

In short, Egypt was a fucking mess, and Cairo in particular was nothing short of a hellish slaughterhouse. And it wasn't just the dead causing it; our pathetic excuse for a government probably did more damage than the rotten, flesh-eating shells of men did. Before the Panic, our country was in political disarray. Following the Revolution in 2011, and with the subsequent ousting of President Mubarak, many of us had high hopes that things would get better. But when the Muslim Brotherhood came into power the following year, and with the riots, police brutality, and emotional strife that were felt all throughout Egypt, any ounce of hope for a better life seemed dead. And when the news about the true nature of the virus was brought to light, things in the homeland went from shitty to shit-tacular.

Many of the infected came from the south, through Sudan. We had already been experiencing outbreaks in the rural areas and on the coast, and given the mostly flat terrain of our country, tracking them down and disposing of them was relatively simple. But the waves of zombies pouring in was just as easy. And so when massive groups of infected overran the border patrol stations on our southern border, our then-president Mohamed Morsi declared martial law throughout all of Egypt. This was after the Israelis had completed their wall, so the Sinai Peninsula was already secure. All we had to worry about now was our southern and western borders.

_**Since Sudan was overrun, how did Libya attempt to handle their outbreaks? Did any zombies cross over your border with Libya?** _

Some did, but not in tremendous numbers as our southern neighbor. From what I heard, Libya was barely holding itself together. The aftermath of the civil war and overthrow of Gaddafi had created a lot of inner conflict, mostly between Gaddafi supporters and the new regime. The provisional government had decided to begin evacuating civilians to Sicily, in cooperation with the Italian government. Since they had no mountains to flee to, I guess that was the only thing they could think of. I was beginning to wonder if our president was going to consider doing the same thing. If he did, where would we go? Greece? Saudi Arabia? Alexandria's ports were in constant chaos, so the only other option was by plane, but you and I both know that there weren't enough of them to escort the remaining forty-nine million surviving Egyptians out of the country.

Like many of my countrymen, I despised him. When he came to power, he promised great change throughout Egypt. Keep in mind that promises were _made_ , not kept. In November of 2012, he issued a declaration that granted him unlimited powers during the constitutional crisis at the time. And while yes, that decision was revoked, it still left many of us unsure of his motives. He had already failed to solve our country's security issues and fuel shortages, and with the virus spreading rapidly throughout the continent, our hope in him was pretty much non-existent.

_**When did things really get bad?** _

On the first of June, President Morsi declared on state television that a military offensive was planning on meeting the undead at the small village of Minya, which I guess you can say was our version of Yonkers. That was the first time the world caught a glimpse of a mega swarm. Two hundred soldiers against hundreds of thousands of ghouls **[1]**. You should have seen the broadcast: the swarm emerging on the horizon with no end in sight, the soldiers' guns eventually running out of bullets, the soldiers being overrun in that gray sea of walking corpses. But to me, one of the worst parts of that broadcast was when one of the cameramen was tackled, the camera capturing an up close image of a ghoul digging into his stomach. The camera died just as the zombie succeeded in ripping out a small length of bowel.

Things just got worse from there. Over the next few days, the Great Panic started to live up to it's name in Egypt; shops were looted, our roads quickly jammed, citizens started killing each other over food and water. I had a friend that lived in Izmir, Turkey, so I planned on gathering supplies before heading to the airport. But there was a problem; what remained of the military had placed the whole city under quarantine, and that the airport was shut down to avoid bringing in more infected. Sadly, our sanctuary would be short-lived...

I was out gathering some food, when a large crowd of people had gathered in the streets, outside of the Abdeen presidential palace. They were demanding to know what the president was going to do about the situation, where they were supposed to go, and what were they supposed to do. More and more villages and cities were being overrun, and more and more Egyptians were becoming ghouls by the day. Armed guards had been posted on the other side of the gate, just in the off chance if someone were to break in.

We suddenly heard screams from the rear; most of us turned to see the horde approaching. _T_ _housands_ of them, rounding the corner. It was then we realized that they must have overrun the defenses, and now they were flowing through our capital like the streams of the Nile!

We all began to panic. Some tried to climb over the high gate and fence, but were immediately shot by the guards. I was standing about three rows behind the gate, shouting with my fellow citizens about what the hell was the president doing while we were practically sitting ducks. I soon smelt smoke, but before I could turn my head to try to identify the source, the air exploded and me and some of those around me were knocked to the ground.

I struggled to open my eyes. My vision was blurry, and all I could hear was this constant ringing in my ears. For a second, I was afraid I had gone deaf. Thankfully this feeling only lasted for a fews moments, as my senses returned to normal, and I could put together what had just happened. There had been an explosion; I don't know if someone had gotten a hold of some dynamite or a homemade bomb, but the gate was blown off, and people were trying to pour into the courtyard. They started to drop like flies... I don't know if the soldiers knew that they were killing more civilians than they were zombies, but maybe that was their intent. Maybe they could kill the protesters to distract the undead while they fled back inside the palace like cowards, but that's just my personal theory.

I struggled to my feet, using a piece of the broken gate as support. I felt dizzy, and reached to touch the side of my face; my entire hand felt warm and wet. I'm pretty sure I had a concussion. I looked up ahead to the palace and saw the last of the sackless soldiers retreat into the complex. Those slimy bastards would rather save their own skins then save the people they were supposed to protect. Oh wait, they were there to protect the president and not us!

Someone shouted, "Look over there!" I looked down in the other direction and saw a tank and about twenty soldiers soldiers marching down Qasr El Nil Street. For a brief second, my hope returned to me, as maybe these men would escort us to safety. **[He snorts.]** After what the palace guards just pulled, I should have known better...

There was another explosion. Suddenly there were bodies, body parts, blood, and rubble flying through the air. Once again, I was knocked to the ground, but this time, the blast knocked me into the side of a car. I hit my shoulder against the door, and I felt it dislocate. I winced on the hot ground, fighting the urge to weep. When the smoke began to clear, I could see many of the demonstrators littered the street, as well as a small number of the horde behind them. There were dozens of burned and dismembered bodies all around. The zombies in the front began to feast on some of the wounded demonstrators that were still breathing, while the horde moved past the dead, burnt ones.

I looked up in time to see the men ready their AK's and open fire at the undead, not bothering to switch their weapons to semi-automatic. The soldier in the machine gunner's nest was mowing down zeds with his .50 caliber machine gun, but only managed to blow their bodies to pieces. Many zombies' heads were still moaning and snapping their jaws, even if they weren't attached to their bodies. Didn't they realize this after what happened in Minya?

I don't know how I mustered the strength, but I got to my feet, still clutching my shoulder, and made a run for it, booking it down the sidewalk away from the palace and past the soldiers and tank. I was thankful they didn't try to shoot me. I prayed I would maybe find someone who could give me a ride out of the city, someone who could take me to the coast. Maybe I could acquire myself a boat that could take me to Turkey, or at least to one of the Turkish or Greek islands in the Aegean Sea. Well, if any boats were still in our ports, anyway.

After jogging for what seemed like forever, I had reached the Qasr El Nil Bridge, this long stretch of road that connected Tahrir Square to Gezira Island. I peered over the side and I could barely make out the shape of a few ghouls floating in the Nile, floating upstream. I looked behind me and saw a truck driving by, to which I nearly threw myself in front of, waving my good arm around like an idiot. It came to stop; the man behind the wheel must have read my mind, as he threw the passenger door open without a second though and nodded, gesturing for me to get in.

I hurried in and we sped down the bridge. He asked where I was heading. I told him to take me to the coast. He said that's where he was going, and didn't say anything else. I looked in the side view mirror, to barely catch a glimpse another tank roll around the corner. I heard a faint _boom,_ and saw another crowd of zombies vanish in a cloud of black smoke...

 **[He finishes** **his soda.]** I can't tell you how many people died in Cairo, or fled into the vast desert, or tried to swim across the Red Sea to reach Saudi Arabia, or how many people fled across the Sinai in an attempt to reach Israel. It's a shame that the wall was already completed by that point. I've read this blog by an Israeli soldier who spent his war days patrolling the wall; he described several incidents where people attempting to flee from the hordes tried to scale the wall but no avail. I can't begin to imagine all the children, elderly, and babies. Oh God, the babies... **[He looks down at his bare feet, half buried in the sand.]**

_**What's your opinion on the current situation your home country is in right now?** _

Honestly, I probably should have seen something like this coming. With no president, hardly any of Parliament left, who did you expect to fill the power vacuum? He came out of nowhere, it seemed, but people needed someone to follow and he filled the void. He demanded that all Egyptians that fled the country during the Panic were required to return to "rebuild the nation to its former glory", but I'm not going back there. I'm perfectly fine where I'm at, so "his highness" can kiss my royal ass. To tell you the truth, that demand is only to have people build his new palace. And not to mention what he has in store for the nation's women...

The Principality of Egypt is expanding; they've already taken Cyrenaica, or what was once eastern Libya, and now he's saying they should march into what used to be Sudan. He's pissed at Israel, after they annexed Mount Sinai and everything east of it for "religious reasons" when the wall came down at the end of the war. He can bitch and complain about losing territory all he wants, but Egypt doesn't have the numbers nor the resources to take it back. The Saudis aren't going to help him either; they're too busy trying to rebuild their shattered economy after the "Saudi Scorched Earth". He still has the Suez, so he should be grateful.

**[1]- The exact number of ghouls that overran the Egyptian operation in Minya is still unknown.**


	5. France (The Great Panic)

**Hey guys, so the reason why this chapter took a little longer to publish was because I had to do a lot of research to ensure that my portrayal of the subject was (somewhat) accurate. This anecdote wasn't part of my original grand scheme, but I figured that this certain chapter topic was only mentioned once in passing in the book, so I decided to put my own spin on it.** **And to top it off, I had to go through multiple rewrites so that it was as good as I wanted it to be. This is my longest chapter to date, so I hope y'all enjoy it!**

**As always, read, review, and like!**

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** PARIS, FRANCE **

**[As much as I really want to visit the actual site of her ordeal, Emilie Benart is in the hospital. Her cancer has returned, and it is showing no signs of stopping. Her hairless head, pale skin, and sad eyes only serve to increase my sympathy for the poor woman. It's nighttime when I enter the facility. Her doctor quietly leaves the room immediately after I make my presence known. According to Madame Benart, she is one of the few (if not _the_ only) survivor of the now ** **infamous Versailles Fire.]**

Where did you expect people to run to? They were everywhere; coming mainly from the north and east, from Belgium and Germany respectively. The Pyrenees to the south helped in keeping the Spanish ghouls out, and also succeeded in keeping the Andorrans safe **[1]**. Of course you also had internal outbreaks, such as Marseilles or Bordeaux, and not to mention the bloodshed in Paris. You also had a handful of zombies coming up from the sea, attacking our beachside towns and attacking tourists. Don't get me started on Monaco. That place was a bloody mess; they tried to wall off the tiny micro-state, and when that failed, the port and docks became a madhouse. After the war, we simply just reincorporated Monaco back under our power. Besides, the casinos are a big help in revitalizing our economy.

Versailles seemed like a sweet deal. With its many rooms, wide corridors, and high gate out front, many people thought it was the perfect place to hide. Sure, there were some spots around the property that needed to be fortified, such as the gardens, but other than that, that gilded mansion seemed like a God-send. Why spend your war days cramped up in some rundown apartment when you can ride out the war in style? I was actually one of the first ones to arrive there, as I had lived in the neighboring town, so getting there wasn't really an issue. I remember when I first got there, I was upstairs when I looked out one of the large windows, looked up ahead to the Royal Courtyard, and I could see hundreds of people running for the place. They were carrying luggage, children, food, a few were carrying mattresses. **[She grins and chuckles.]** I remember this one man was carrying a nude painting of a young woman. Each day more and more people came, all the while not bothering to screen for bites...

Now, you would think that with so many refugees coming in, you would probably expect the place to be asphyxiating. But this was far from the truth; Versailles was designed to house up to twenty-thousand residents, with seven hundred rooms in total. Most of the rooms were bare, so you had dozens of people occupying a lot of the rooms with sleeping bags or cheap mattresses. Of course, there were some people who had to resort to sleeping in the many corridors of the mansion, as there weren't that many rooms with actual beds, as previously stated. Many people had actually decided to sleep in the famous Hall of Mirrors, on the upper level. I was one of the lucky ones who actually got to stay in a bedchamber. It was the Dauphine's Bedroom, where several kings such as Charles X and Louis XVI were born. I shared the room with fifteen other people but we didn't really talk to each other much. We all were just people who needed a warm place to sleep. I can't give you an exact number, but probably up to a hundred thousand people took refuge at the chateau **[2].**

_**What was done regarding the defenses the palace?** _

What defenses? The damn place was too big to fortify in a few days, let alone fortify at all. The first major mistake was the government not at least sending some troops to establish an official safe zone. Hell, even if they didn't send troops, putting up a wall would have been sufficient. If we had gotten some official assistance from the government or military, we could have erected a wall and convert the vast gardens to grow food. But no help came, so we were left to our own devices. But then again, maybe they didn't consider making Versailles as a safe zone, but who knows?

Secondly, as I previously stated, Versailles was too big to completely secure. Not only were there too many windows on the ground level, but the gardens had absolutely no pre-existing walls or barriers. Besides, when the place was filled with refugees, and with all the shit they brought with them, nobody thought to bring a hammer and some nails? But then again, we were only safe for a few days. Maybe some did consider it, but I certainly didn't hear anything about actually coming together to pull it off.

But that wasn't the end of our worries. Food also became a concern, and rather quickly I might add. The palace's kitchen had ceased operations long ago, so when people's fruits, breads, and junk food began running low, fights broke out. **[She snorts.]** Those idiots must have never heard of rationing, because by the forth day, there was hardly any left. There was word going around about going beyond the walls to scavenge for more food, but they were shut down due to the dead's omnipresence, and not to mention their ever-growing numbers. This led to more arguments and skirmishes. On the afternoon of the third day, I was wondering outside the chapel in the North Wing when I heard a gun go off. I went to find the source, and around the corner, I could see a dead body on the ground, a tiny revolver next to it, and three men holding another one against the wall. People were standing around shocked, while some covered their children's eyes. I later learned that the man that they were trying to restrain had an extra stash of apples and refused to share, so when the now-dead individual tried to take one for himself he was shot. I don't know what happened to the shooter, but it wouldn't surprise me if he was thrown outside to the dead.

The undead themselves weren't a _big_ concern, but some of us feared the possibility of a mega swarm. We had heard of what happened in Cairo, the horde breaking through the defenses, the military sacrificing civilians so their president could escape. The only way the windows or maybe even the front gate could break was if a swarm had enough numbers to literally push through. We had a few individual zombies here and there, banging on the glass, but we just ignored them.

 **[She turns away briefly to cough.]** It was some time in the night on the forth day when everything went downhill. I was awoken by the sound of glass breaking. I jolted up in my bed, and saw the large bedroom window smashed, and one by one, ghouls began to pour into the room, falling on each other as they entered. My roommates awoke to this as well, but one of them didn't get up in time when a ghoul fell on top of him and bit into his cheek. I jumped out of bed, slipped on my shoes and went out into the adjacent Grand Cabinet, which was often used as a sort of gambling/conversation room, while still in my nightwear. The only weapon I had brought with me to the mansion was this rusty crowbar I had found in my basement.

Most of my roommates followed after me, but a few stayed behind, trying and failing to hold off their attackers. The moonlight illuminated the lifeless walking corpses outside, and I could see the ranks of undead beginning to break the glass on the windows too. We didn't stop and continued running. We made it to the hallway, where we could hear shouts and screams coming from seemingly everywhere.

As we ran throughout the Dauphine apartments, people began to rise from their slumber. As we ran I shouted, "It's not worth it! Run!" Many followed after me, not wanting to take their chances with the horde. We all ran through the last antechamber before turning left through a passage, and then turning left again to head to the Vestibule of the Queen's Staircase. If you know anything about French history, that very staircase was where angry peasants tried to reach Marie Antoinette during the Revolution. One ghoul stepped out of nowhere and into my path, but I swung the crowbar, bashing it across the face, all the while not stopping my run.

We all could hear the menacing collective moan coming from behind us. We ran up the staircase, some tripping and causing others behind them to fall. I reached the middle platform of the staircase, the moonlight shining in through the windows behind me as I gazed down at the frightened refugees before me. Me and the first bunch of people that made it up there with me could now make out the outlines of the undead, and a few began to munch on a couple of unfortunate souls who couldn't make it up the stairs in time.

I didn't realize this at the time, but that was the front of a chunk of the Parisian horde that broke off from the main one and were now besieging the palace in search for warm flesh. They must have run out of it in the city...

But going back to what I was saying earlier, many people ran past me as they retreated to the upper level. A few more people were dragged down the stairs to their deaths, and more and more ghouls were trying to push through the ghouls that were still feasting on their midnight snack. I snapped out of my mini trance and continued up the stairs. But no less than a few seconds later...

 **[She pauses and turns to look at her EMT. She then looks down at her feet.]** I don't know who had the petrol can, I don't know who poured the contents of said petrol can all over the stairs and platform, nor do I know who was the one who threw the lighter, but I looked down below one last time, just in time to see the ghouls go up in flames. I guess the refugees thought it was their only option in stopping the ghouls in their tracks. Needless to say, the dead did not go down immediately. They continued stumbling up the fire-engulfed stairs like walking torches, bumping into the walls and spreading the fire even more. I reached the marbled loggia at the top of the staircase, the fire beginning to spread at an alarming rate. The smell was horrid; smelling the stench of the undead was putrid enough, but inhaling that charred, smoky aroma was almost enough to make me puke.

**_But that wasn't all that caused the fall of Versailles, correct?_ **

Indeed, it wasn't. You remember just a few moments ago when I mentioned that nobody screened refugees for bites? Yeah, that came back to bite us in the ass, literally. A few people who must have had scratches or bites that weren't too deep had gotten in, turned, and joined the undead ranks in attacking their countrymen and women. That's what we saw when we began running around the upper floor.

I pushed the doors to the King's Guard's Room open, to reveal the room in disarray. In the barely illuminated room, refugees were fighting their now-turned friends and family members, so they didn't notice me nor any of the other survivors running into the room and past them. I ran through the room and then entered the antechamber, further avoiding the chaos around me. I was about to reach the doorway that led into the chamber that led to the one of the king's bedrooms, when I felt something cold grab my bare ankle. I fell forward, losing my crowbar and hitting my nose on the floor, hearing it crack. As I began to sniffle blood, I soon felt another cold hand with an iron grip wrap around my leg. I began kicking my other leg in the air, hoping I could blindly strike the creature in the face. I succeeded, thankful that I wasn't bitten.

I gathered my bearings and rose to my feet, running until I soon found myself in one of the king's bedrooms. Like all the others, I did not stay there long and ran into the cabinet, and then into the Hall of Mirrors. That would soon become the climax of ordeal.

Within that lavish hall of glass and ceiling paintings, there wasn't a single centimeter of peace. The chaos that plagued this famous corridor was the same as the chaos that was plaguing the rest of the floor: refugees fighting their reanimated comrades, their battles lit only by the moonlight that shined through the windows and reflected off of the glass across the way. One man with a pistol was overpowered by two ghouls, firing his gun on reflex and hitting a young girl, probably no older than eight, in the thigh. I shrieked as I saw her tiny body collapse to the ground, as a female ghoul descended upon her. Even with everything else going on around me, I could make out her terrified screams from all the others. Imagine being in her shoes, scared, desperately wanting your mother or father to come and save you...

But the most prominent thing I saw was many poor souls smashing the windows and jumping two stories to safety. Many only managed to break their legs, but many more died when their heads or bodies hit the pavement and splattered like bugs on a windshield. I looked out one of the smashed windows to see dozens of bodies had formed some sort of pile below, probably at least two or three bodies high. Of course a few more piles had formed further down the way, but this one appeared to be the biggest.

I turned to my back and to see another fire start. I gazed into the darkened room that I had just came from, to make out the outline of someone throwing a Molotov. It hurdled through the air...coming towards...me. I hit the floor in a flash, just in time for the bottle to strike one of the gilded sculptured _gueridons_ by one of the windows and the wall behind it, exploding in an orange fireball, before spreading downward to the floor. My eyes turned upward and saw the flames spreading upward towards the ceiling. With the damned all around, at various spots in the hall and the burning ones now appearing in the adjacent room, I had to make a decision: die fighting a battle I knew I couldn't win, or die trying to escape. I figured jumping would have been a safer bet. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, sprinted about ten feet, and leaped...

I landed on my feet, but fell face first onto the pile of bodies. It was nothing short of a miracle that I didn't break any bones of my own, but I definitely broke someone else's when I landed. I didn't know how many were dead and how many were just seriously injured, nor did I know if any of those bodies were now zombies, but I figured it was worth the risk. I tried to stand, but soon fell forward again. I had tripped on someone leg. I could hear someone on the pile begging for help, while a few others tried to move. I tried to get off that pile as fast as I could, stepping on what I assumed were mostly dead bodies.

After setting my feet on solid ground, I tried to run, but for the second time that night, I felt something grab my bare ankle. But instead of being cold and firm, this one felt warm, weak, and a little wet. I looked down, to which I could ever so slightly make out the pained face of a woman. She was lying on her back, her lower half stuck under the other bodies. The only piece of clothing she wore was a white fluffy robe that was untied, exposing her naked frame. Her head and the hand that grabbed me were dripping in blood, and she appeared to be in pain.

"H-H-Help me..." she muttered softly. "P-Please, h-help me...".

I looked down at her, and in one swift movement, I brought my foot down upon her head. She stirred slightly, so after a second blow, she fell silent. I took one last look at her face before turning around and fleeing the scene.

I only looked back once, when I had reached the end of the gardens. From that great distance, I could see that the entire center section of the palace was engulfed in flames, and the fire was now starting to consume the South Wing. The dead were drawn to it, like moths to a lightbulb, which played in my favor as they were too distracted by the sight to notice me. But the farther I ran, the more I worried that I might wind up in a dark spot, and be pinned to the ground and torn open like a Christmas present. You're probably going to tell me that it was a miracle that I made it as far as I did that night with no weapon, and I couldn't agree more.

When it eventually consumed the whole palace, the fire was so large it lit up the entire surrounding area, and the black smoke carried on for miles. Honestly, if this had happened during the day, I'm certain the smoke would block out the sun. But that didn't happen; the nuclear autumn did it for us, but I'm not just talking about the clouds that spread from the Middle East or the various cities across the continent that burned.

**_Your government used the nuclear option?_ **

**[She hesitates to answer at first.]** Only once...

**_I'm sorry if I upset you..._ **

No please, it's fine. **[She takes a deep breath, possibly to avoid crying.]** Strasbourg...That's where they dropped it. They must have figured that with so many pouring in from Germany, and with the city being mostly overrun, why not try an experiment? The only difference between us and the Iranians and Pakistanis was they only used theirs to destroy humans, not ghouls. I guess the military must have thought most of the residents had been either eaten or turned into ghouls themselves, so they figured detonating the bomb directly on the ground was the best option. What fools...The bomb flattened the city, and the resulting radiation spread upwind to Germany, going so far as Wurzburg. And Berlin is still giving us shit about it.

The reason I was so emotional when I heard the news was that my ex-husband and ten-year-old daughter lived in Strasbourg. I hadn't been able to contact them since the true nature of the virus was leaked. I wasn't sure if they had made it out, had died in the blast, or had vanished in the stomachs of ghouls... **[She cannot control herself any longer and lets a few tears fall down her cheeks. I stand up and offer her a handkerchief. She smiles as she accepts it. After composing herself, she returns to the topic of Versailles.]**

While a mansion with a hall of mirrors nearly killed me, a castle with stone walls saved me. I somehow survived long enough to make my way to Chambord, one of the more successful French castles that survived the war. The complex had already been secure, but just the castle itself. When the winter came, when it was safe to go beyond the walls, we put up put up a fence along the edge of the river at the rear of the castle, and ran it all the way down the way until almost all of the green quads were contained within. Sure, the castle itself was slightly above the water, almost giving it a moat kind of look, but we did not want to take any chances. We used the quads to grow food and raise a few livestock, which we were thankful there were so many them. I spent the remainder of the war there, in its cold, but nonetheless safe, walls. A few days in a palace, to eleven years in a fortress. And I could not be any more grateful.

As of today, there are no plans to rebuild the palace that once attracted millions of tourists from all over the world. You think it cost a lot of money back in Louis's day? **[She lets out a weak laugh.]** Ha! You should see the modern estimate. We could try if we wanted to, but we would be up to our necks in foreign debt if we tried. All that remain are the gardens, and of course our national memorial that stands in the center of where the Marble Courtyard used to be.

Personally, I think we should just leave it alone. Maybe it, along with the Strasbourg bombing, will serve as an example of how desperation and stupidity proved to be just as dangerous as the undead. But hey, what do I know?

**[Madame Benart died in the company of her remaining family thirteen days after this interview.]**

**[1]- Just as with other mountainous countries such as Nepal and Bhutan, Andorra was one of the more successful European nations during the war, despite its small army size.**

**[2]- While it's still unclear how many French citizens actually took refuge in Versailles, one post-war estimate puts the number somewhere between one hundred thousand and one hundred fifty thousand.**


	6. CDC (Blame)

**So as the title parentheses suggests, this takes place during the chapter "Blame". I know this disrupts my plan to post these chapters in chronological order, but I feel like this one deserved to be in it. Out of every American institution Brooks put in the novel, I feel like the Center for Disease Control being left out was a mistake. After this chapter, I will jump back to the "Great Panic". Again, this just came to me one day and I regret not putting it at the beginning.**

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**CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA, USA**

**[It took some trouble finding her whereabouts, but I was finally able to locate Monique Jones at the local homeless shelter. The former Center for Disease Control employee is in the mess hall, sitting alone at a table in the corner of the room. I walk over to her, and without looking up from her tray of food, she gestures for me to sit down. It seems that she knows who I am, even though my appearance is by surprise. Miss Jones is currently suffering from a cold, and even though she assures me its not contagious, I still have my suspicions.]**

I'm surprised you found me. I just assumed that the UN had enough interviews for their report, and you didn't need to talk to anyone else.

_**Oh, so you know about my work?** _

Dude, in case you haven't noticed, anyone that has a somewhat interesting story around the world is begging to be interviewed. In fact, just two days ago I was walking down the sidewalk and heard some chick talking another chick how her husband got a rejection email saying that "his story isn't worth [their] time". I mean, if you have something that is somewhat relevant to the war, why not share it? But I know that you can only collect so much, so you got to leave some out, don't you? **[She chuckles.]** And I also read the newspaper and listen in on a television whenever I'm in a place that has one, such as this place. But I know you're not here to hear about my personal life or any of that shit so let's just get to it, shall we?

 **[She turns to the side and coughs a few times into her elbow.]** Now, when I say "first stage", I mean the time between Patient Zero being discovered in China to the outbreak in Cape Town. So during the first stage, we were as just in the dark about the virus as any other American institution. But even when the Cape Town outbreak got the public's attention, that's when everyone started asking questions in hushed whispers. Those of us that paid close attention to the news, as well as those of us that actually gave a shit about their jobs, wondered if there was anything we could do. It was still called African Rabies back then, so we naturally assumed another vaccine was in order. But the thing is, the CDC didn't produce its own vaccines. Flu shots, for example, were often produced by private sector manufacturers, but they had to be approved by the FDA before they could begin production.

_**Didn't you inform the public to take Phalanx?** _

**[She lets out an annoyed groan.]** If I had a nickel for every time I heard that, maybe I wouldn't be in my current predicament. Here's the answer I give everyone: no, we didn't. Then again, why should have we? We never told the public when to take a flu shot. We never told them when to take a tetanus shot. Sure pharmacies had signs and banners outside saying that they had shots available for whatever bug was going around at the time, but we never released an official statement. All we were technically responsible for was reporting how many deaths and cases were reported in each state.

You know how I said earlier that we didn't produce our own vaccines? Well the same goes for Phalanx. Phalanx was processed and distributed via Mr. Scott's independent contractor, so we had no way of stopping, let alone _controlling_ , the vaccine's widespread distribution. Regardless, some people still like to point the finger at us and say, "Why didn't you stop that son of a bitch? Didn't you know what was really happening across the country?" Besides, we already had a lot of shit on our plate, as we were too busy trying to deal with regular occurrences such as influenza and salmonella.

_**But you were also responsible for having a sample of the virus and studying it, just like any other virus, right?** _

Yes, that's right.

_**And it was also your responsibility to determine ways to combat it?** _

Hypothetically, yes.

**_And you didn't?_ **

**[She avoids answering my question.]** Keep in mind that the World Health Organization didn't really help either. At least we had the fucking guts to actually try to do something. They had the information about attacks, but they just brushed it aside like every other international agency. I also hate the fact that people aren't attacking the FDA. They were the ones that let that son of a bitch release his "wonder drug". But hey, you can't change everyone's minds, right?

When the government began to deploy the secret Alpha teams in crush minor internal outbreaks, they often had to report what they saw when the job was done. You know, how many casualties, where they were located, and most importantly, how bad were their wounds. Every team had at least one medical professional on board, just in the off chance that one of the team members was bitten or horribly scratched. Thankfully that hardly happened, as their armor was pretty tough, but they would almost always request to take a look at some of the bodies. Sometimes, if an official Alpha team was busy handling a case far away from another one, they would also employ SWAT teams to handle it.

That's where I come in. I was brought along on a mission that occurred in Atlanta. It was an apartment complex in one of the more poor neighborhoods. The team I was partnered up with was SWAT. Like every other mission, the team conducted the mission under the cover of darkness, as to not draw a lot of attention. And to add an extra precaution to not being caught, their weapons had been silenced. I was told to wait outside with two other men. Thankfully there weren't that many people outside, but if someone happened to walk up to us or poke their head out of a window and ask us what the hell we were up to, one of them would say, "Police business", and nothing else. I never had to experience anyone question us before, but it wouldn't shock me if people didn't really believe us.

When the ordeal was finished, I was brought inside to analyze the scene and help move the bodies. Just when we were close to being done, one of the corpses that had been under another corpse tried to get up. Apparently the bullet had only grazed its temple. One of the officers raised his pistol, but I told him to hold it. I requested they restrain the creature so that I could take it back to the facility downtown. They said I was crazy, and that they had explicit orders to exterminate every last one of them. I requested they bind and gag it so it can be studied. The officers looked at each other, then to the commanding officer, and after some hesitation, he reluctantly gave the order to restrain the creature.

After three of the officers struggled to hold him in place, handcuff him, gag him, and place a bag over his head, we threw him in the back of one of the vans and drove back to the CDC headquarters. Most of the employees had gone home for the night, so getting the creature in wasn't really a big hassle. I thanked the officers for their assistance, and the commanding officer said, "Lady, you better hope you find something that can help" before leaving.

_**How did you attempt to decipher the virus?** _

**[She takes a sip of water out of a small styrofoam cup.]** I kept him strapped to a table in one of the bottom levels of the complex. I had his arms amputated so he couldn't grab, and for extra protection, I removed most of his front teeth so he couldn't bite. I took skin, saliva, and even blood samples, or at least, the black gunk that used to be blood...

_**Were you able to figure out anything helpful to the cause?** _

Not much, I'm afraid. All I was able to figure out was that the creature felt no pain, given how it didn't notice when I removed his limbs, and it didn't require any of its abdominal organs, as I had removed them as well and put them in a freezer. Basically, it was mostly stuff that was already in the Warmbrunn-Knight papers. When I examined the contents of its stomach, I saw that there were large chunks of flesh inside, so large that it only made it clear that the creature didn't bother chewing and just swallowed its food whole.

Of course I couldn't keep the specimen a secret forever. I eventually had to show him to my coworkers, who in turn went to my superiors about it. At first they were furious that I had brought back one of those things without informing them about it, . But then his demeanor changed and composed himself. He asked if I had figured anything out, to which I replied that I had not figured out much yet.

But there was one more reason why we never went public: because the administration at the time told us not too. When they read that report that those two men did, the government had sent a direct message to the head of institution, saying that the Alpha teams are taking care of things, and that while research is appreciated, any leaks or announcements to the public would be met with "severe and dire consequences". Are you fucking kidding me? Here you have the opportunity to actually turn the tide of the situation that was slowly creeping u on society, and actually learn something useful, and you're telling us to keep our pie holes shut? **[She shakes her head.]** If anything, the public should be pointing their fingers at the scumbags within that administration that are still breathing and say, "Why didn't you give the green light?"

As requested, the CDC kept to itself regarding the information me and my team were gathering. As I said before, it wasn't much, but at least we knew now that the only way these creatures could survive was the brain in their gray, rotting skulls to remain intact. As time progressed, we also came to the conclusion that the virus could only be passed on to other humans. While zombies still go after animals, the virus has no effect on them. We had a few test rabbits in one of the upstairs labs, so we got the idea to let the creature take a bite out of it and wait and see what happens. The poor rabbit died very shortly after the experiment, its left hind leg missing, and its white fur stained with bright red blood. We kept the body on surveillance for hours, and got no results, to which we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. This around the time that news lady spilled the beans, so needless to say that research was terminated. Who was going to do work when you had the Atlanta horde banging on your door?

 **[She turns to the side again, this time to sneeze into her elbow.]** Again, regardless of what you really did, people won't listen to what you have to say after the fact. If that's the case, all you can do is take it like an adult.

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**So as previously states, this will be the last "Blame" excerpt. The next couple of chapters will return to the "Great Panic" section.**


	7. Ethiopia (The Great Panic)

**Hey guys! I apologize for the super long wait! I accidentally ruined my laptop a while back, so I've been a little slow trying to get online stuff done at the pace that I want. As a result, I've been having to do all my stuff on whatever desktop I can find. After this chapter, there's only gonna be one or two "Great Panic" chapters left before I move onto the next section. This chapter is a little short, so bare with me. As always, read, like, and review!**

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**TWELVE MILES OFF THE COAST OF THE SOMALILAND PROVINCE** , **ETHIOPIA**

**[Ethiopia was almost among the many African nations that fell victim to complete annihilation during the outbreak. But thankfully, the nation has been able to not only retake its pre-war territory, but has also "liberated" Eritrea, Djibouti, and the Somaliland Province of what used to be Somalia. Amadi Teferi insists that I call him AT, as that is what everyone else calls him. Unfortunately, we are forced to conduct our interview while he is performing his day job: maintaining the latest state-of-the-art offshore wind farm that helps bring electricity to the coastal towns in the area. The national government hopes to make the entire nation dependent on renewable energy in the next couple of decades, but while some progress has been made, there is still a long way to go.]**

Most of Sub-Saharan Africa was already in disarray when the rest of the world woke up to the crisis. The continent's widespread poverty, combined with poor health care, overconfident militaries, and for some countries like Zimbabwe and Angola, whose leaders who had held onto power for decades and have thrived while their people lived in squalor, made the African Front ten times more excruciating. Did you hear about what happened in Equatorial Guinea?

**[I shake my head.]**

That slimy old prick convinced his entire government that with the ensuring chaos sweeping the nation, the people he had been oppressing since the late 70s now had the opportunity to seize the country for themselves. So what did he do? He, along with everyone in the government from the prime minister to the lowest secretary in the Chamber of Deputies, took cyanide pills.

**[He unlocks his smartphone and pulls up the Google search engine. He goes to the "Images" section and within a few seconds, pulls up a photograph. It shows the inside of the president's office, his body and many others littering the floor.]**

**[Mr. Teferi points to the picture on the screen.]** One of the secretaries didn't partake in the mass suicide. She took this photo on her cell phone.

_**Did she make it?** _

No one knows. A UN sweep team found the phone lying on the floor in the Chamber of Deputies. When they charged it up, they found the photo as the last photo taken. They ran a record on who owned it and pulled up her records. She hasn't been seen since.

**[He puts his phone back into his vest pocket.]**

My country was barely keeping itself together. It was during that time in our nation's history that being a landlocked country on a continent with a little over a billion people living in it was our greatest disadvantage. We had let Eritrea go in the 90s...Maybe if we had kept them we could have used their ports to escape. We do now, but that's besides the point. At that time we had no ports to run to, no large arsenal of bombs to drop. Our army was a decent size, just a little over three hundred thousand, with a substantial amount of able-bodied men fit for service when the need arose, but even that wasn't able to keep everything together. At least not during the Panic.

Addis Ababa was in anarchy. The military was beginning to withdraw, and it was decided that the Highlands would be the best bet for sanctuary. They weren't even attempting evacuations anymore; everyone was too worried about saving their own skins. Barely anyone living was left. If anyone made it out of the city alive, great. If not...

There was this little battalion that was stationed at the football stadium. They were given strict instructions to lure as many dead into the facility as possible to relieve some of the forces that were being pinned in other parts of the city. Too many good men had died that day, so the higher ups decided what better way to destroy as many ghouls as possible? Lure them into a complex that could host up to thirty-five thousand people, of course.

We really didn't have to work hard in luring them in. We used fireworks to gain their attention. The sky was dark that day, a storm brewing in the clouds above. We fired them at twenty second intervals, giving us enough time to get organized and prepare to corral them inside the building like cattle being led to slaughter.

**_Since there were no more official evacuations, what were people doing to get out?_ **

Any way they could; driving, running. Many had decided to take a chance and head for the train station. It was a railway that connected our capital to Djibouti City's port. I guess they figured maybe they could escape there and hope and pray there would be boats in the harbor. Unfortunately, due to a lack of maintenance and an ambitious road construction program made the line between the capital and Djibouti almost inoperable. There was still a line that was operational between Djibouti City and Dire Dawa, which sort of acted as a halfway point between the two capitals, was still functioning, but that didn't do anyone any good when the virus hit. I heard that no one who made it there knew a thing about how to operate a train, so they became sitting ducks when the station was overrun.

Back at the stadium, we had managed to find an oil tanker and had somehow squeezed it through the entrance and onto the field. We were to use that to finish them off. That's what I saw when we hovered into that vicinity.

_**What do you mean?** _

I was not part of the ground force, thankfully. I was safely up in the air, serving as one of the co-pilots of a helicopter that would pull the trigger, so to speak. Our job was to make sure to not only destroy the zombies, but also to evacuate any soldiers that were still alive. We were the last chopper left in the city, the others that were able to make it off the ground were already abandoning the city.

From above, I could see the entire stadium, as well as thousands of zombies marching down the streets and closing in on the complex. I could barely make out the shapes of the remaining soldiers retreating to the oil tanker in the middle of the field. They slowly poured into the stadium, like hundreds of thousands of ants returning to their nest after a long day of scavenging.

By this point, there were only seven ground troops left in the battalion. We lowered ourselves closer to them, as they began climbing on top of the oil tanker in an attempt to escape the cold, grasping hands trying to seize them. Two weren't so lucky; one was dragged off the rear ladder before he could reach the top. They had grabbed him by the leg, his comrades not even trying to save him. The other was too close to the edge...slipped and fell in head first.

They told us through our earpieces that they had run out of bullets and were requesting to be evacuated at that moment. My co-pilot told them to wait just a few more minutes until the entire stadium was full. The head soldier cursed at us, screaming that they were sitting ducks and we needed to pull them out that instant. I told them we couldn't do that just yet, but we could provide some cover fire.

_**With what? Rockets?** _

Oh no, we were saving those for the grande finale. We ordered our machine gunner to lay down some of those pricks. It didn't help much, considering the fact that his aim was piss poor even at that the relatively low height we were at, and hardly any headshots were taken. But what other choice did we have?

It seemed like forever, but it looked like the majority of the facility was now jam packed with ghouls. By that point, the machine gunner had run out of ammo, and so I spoke into my mouthpiece, telling the soldiers we would be slowly descending. Even with the propellors running, I could hear the thousands of moans and growls of the damned. I was both scared and intrigued.

As we got closer, it started to rain. We shifted to the side just a bit to allow them to hop on. The machine gunner helped them aboard, but one of the younger soldiers slipped on the now-slippery tanker and grabbed onto the landing skid, almost losing his grip. Two ghouls had grabbed onto his leg and were trying to take bites out of him. He cried for help, and one of the other soldiers actually grabbed a spare AK-47 we had in the chopper, but the head soldier climbed down onto the skid, and brought his boot-clad foot on the young man's hand, sending him to his death.

"Do your fucking job and get us out of here!" he bellowed at us. None of us said a word, we all were in temporary shock over his sudden cruelty. But my co-pilot and I snapped out of our shock and ascended into the sky.As soon as we were high enough, I activated the rockets, aimed at the center of the tanker, and fired. The whole thing went up in a large fireball, the shockwave knocking back a bunch of the ghouls off their feet.

We had to circle back around, as we had come in the opposite direction. As we turned, I looked downward and saw the entire field engulfed in flames and thick, black smoke. I couldn't see any of the ghouls, but I knew that not all of them were dead. Maybe that was the plan, to not kill all of them, but to at least cripple them to some capacity.

I could hear the crackling boom of thunder in the clouds, as the rain began pouring down harder. I knew the rain wouldn't completely douse the blaze. As we navigated through the gray sky, towards the Highlands, I couldn't help but think, _Maybe God's tears will cleanse this city, cleanse this land and planet._ **[He scoffs.]** If only God were as kind...


	8. Texas, USA (The Great Panic)

**BRIGHT HORIZONS RETIREMENT VILLAGE, DALLAS, TEXAS, USA**

**[Chris Grimes only speaks with me at the insistence of his personal nurse. "He feels that talking might help me 'find peace', or some shit like that," he tells me. We enter the facility's rear garden, which is not only used to grow beautiful flowers, but is also used to grow fruits and vegetables that the faculty uses to feed the residents. We sit on a wooden bench in the small courtyard in the middle of the garden. Mr. Grimes rests his wooden cane between his bony legs and pops a peppermint into his mouth.]**

It was supposed to be the final run before Danielle, Junior, Abby, and I skipped town. We had a summer cabin up in Colorado, in the heart of the Rockies. We figured now would be a good a time as any to pack our bags and head up there. "Pack up and duck out," I used to say.

Needless to say, lawlessness had already taken effect. The cops had stopped arresting people for looting. Hell, I even saw one of them gun down two men who were trying to take some winter clothes he had taken from a local clothing outlet.

**_Where were you heading to? To gather supplies, I mean?_ **

Dick's Sporting Goods.

**_But wouldn't that be a major hotspot for looting?_ **

Yes, and my wife and I knew that, but what other choice did we have? First and foremost we needed a gun, or at least a couple of 'em. We were perhaps the only family on our block, and probably the only family in all of Texas for that matter, that didn't own a gun. My drinking buddies used to crack jokes about me not going hunting with them or going to the range with them, but I always gave them the same response: "My father and grandfather never had any, so why should I?"

But here's where living in Dallas played in our favor. There are two Dick's Sporting Goods outlets in the city: one on Park Lane, and the other northwest on Dallas Parkway. So we had two shots of choosing one that hopefully had some stuff left over.

We hopped in the family Yukon **[1]** and sped out of the suburbs and into downtown. It was like driving straight through Hell itself. Bodies littering the streets and sidewalks, some of them slowly getting back up, shops and cars burning, screams echoing into the night. Junior comforted Abby while I tried to navigate through the madness. We had chosen to take our chances with the one on Dallas Parkway.

We entered and parked in the rear of the store, as to not draw too much attention to ourselves. By sheer luck, the back door was left open, the lights of the corridor beckoning us to enter. The store was in more confusion than we had hoped. People didn't pay us any attention, but that didn't assure us that we would be all right while in there. My wife suggested we stay together, but I argued that if we split up, we could get what we needed and get out quicker. She snapped that she was not going to risk losing her husband or any of her children because of that.

After arguing with Danielle for about a minute, we decided to split up. My wife wasn't happy with it, but she agreed that the more we argued, the more we would be in there, and the longer we stayed, the bigger chance of one of us getting injured or killed. I took Junior and she took Abby. My son and I headed up the defunct escalator to the firearms section, while Danielle and Abby headed for the clothing section, in attempt to find anything warm. Most of the guns had been taken from the racks and the display cases. Most of the ammo was gone too, but not enough, which I found odd. **[He shakes his head and frowns.]** Many people must have been too preoccupied with getting as many weapons as they could, but didn't even bother to get the actual stuff needed to kill Zack.

My son hopped over the counter and immediately went for one of the last remaining hunting rifles on the rack, loading bullets into the chamber. I joined him on the other side, before using my foot to kick in one of the glass display cases. I stuffed two pistols into a backpack, along with their corresponding ammunitions. I then picked up this .44 Magnum, large and shiny with a long barrel. As I pried open a box of bullets and began to load the cylinder, I heard Junior scream. I looked down at my feet and saw him lying on the ground, clutching his arm. I could see the blood seep between his fingers. My attention turned to a bearded man making his way over to us, a nine millimeter in his hand. I saw that he was going for the rifle my son had dropped.

In case I didn't make this clear at the beginning, I had never touched or fired a gun in my life. I don't know if it was instinct or what, but I remember jamming the cylinder in place and firing. I wasn't ready for the intense recoil, as I fell back onto my back, cursing myself for not using both hands.

After gathering my bearings, I made my way to my son, helping him to his feet. I wrapped his arm around my shoulders, in an attempt to help him walk better. We stepped over the dead man, a bloody bullet hole on his upper back, but not before reaching down to grab the rifle my son had dropped.

After stumbling down a rear staircase that lead to the shoe section below, we heard a few rounds go off. We ducked behind a shoe shelf, and saw a man collapse in the walkway in front of us. A woman with long, dirty gray hair soon stood over him, taking the baseball bat he was carrying before using her pistol to finish him off. She turned her head to us, looking straight at me. We gazed at each other for what seemed like forever, until she took off, leaving us behind.

After checking to see if the coast was clear, we abandoned our cover. We cut a hard left at the end of the section, almost running into my wife and daughter. They both had large coats in their arms. My wife also had picked up a few camping meals and heaters, just in case if the furnace up at the cabin went out. Danielle had a bloody gash on her forehead, and Abby's shirt was ripped. I didn't want to know what had happened, nor did I have time to, as we had to get out of there before we were either mugged or killed.

We packed up the car with whatever goods we got, and got the hell out of there. Now that we had what we had came for, we had to make one more stop for actual food. We made it onto the main road, but were unprepared for the hail storm of bullets. A few went through the windshield, one hit one of the headlights. Everyone ducked down, Abby and Danielle screamed. I almost swerved out of control, nearly hitting someone who was running across the street, and came screeching to a stop.

I looked up and turned left to see a middle aged man emerging from behind a minivan, clad in all denim and holding an assault rifle in his hands. There was someone else with him, a much younger man, wearing a white wifebeater and cargo shorts, carrying a sawn off shotgun. I quickly reached for the .44. I was hesitant about using it again, remembering what had happened just minutes ago in the store, but I had to push this fear deep down because my family's lives were at risk. I firmly gripped the gun with both hands and returned fire.

Within a matter of seconds I emerged victorious. I scored the younger man between the eyes, and the denim-dressed man in the chest. The kids covered their ears while Danielle just stared in shock. They didn't say anything as we continued on our way.

It wasn't long before we began to cross the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. The few cars that were speeding past were ignoring the speed limit; we were no different. Danielle kept telling me to slow down a tad, but I shut her out. I was just so focused on getting my family out of there as quickly as possible...

 **[He turns away from me, soon finding a rose bush to be rather interesting.]** I just... kept staring...straight ahead. I didn't look in my side view mirror. I didn't see the large Hummer trying to pass us. The sideswipe only took a second or two, sending us over the edge. We all screamed as we plummeted to ground below. All it took was three seconds before we made contact with the solid ground...

I don't know how long I was out. It was still dark when I began to stir, and I felt an intense stinging on the side of my head. I noticed I was sideways. Our car had landed on its side, with the passenger side facing upward. I looked up to Danielle; she was looking down at me, her head covered in blood, her eyes devoid of life.

My worst fear had soon become a reality. I unbuckled and tried to stand, turning to look into the back. Junior's neck was in an unnatural position, and Abby's head was resting against the cracked window, bloody like her mother's.

"No no no no no no," I muttered over and over again. Anyone who knew me personally knew that I seldom cried. But everything important to me was just robbed from me, and it wasn't the dead's fault. I grabbed my son's awkwardly hanging head and held it up, trying to look into his eyes. They were facing upward, almost completely rolled back. I rested my forehead on his, trying to control myself. This proved futile.

Silently weeping, I grabbed my gun and one of the machetes we had brought from the house. Crawling through the now completely shattered windshield, my revolver in hand, I struggled to stand, my wobbly knees almost caving in. I wiped my eyes, blinking to adjust my blurry sight. A lone zombie shambled through the tall grass, its moan becoming louder as it noticed me. I remember forcefully kicking it to the ground, then bringing the machete down on top of its skull.

Sometimes I wonder how many people suffered a similar fate. Then I realize, who fucking cares? **[His voice seems to intensify.]** It's too many to count anyway. So why should my story be fucking special, huh?

**[1]- A full-size SUV produced by the American automobile manufacturer Chevrolet, a branch of General Motors.**


	9. D.C., USA (The Great Panic)

**Hey guys! I'm sorry for the super long wait! Life just gets in the way of stuff sometimes.**

**So this will be the final "Great Panic" chapter. After this, I'm gonna do maybe one or two "Turning the Tide" chapters before moving on to the "Around the World, And Above" chapters, which I'm really excited for! I know that "Home Front USA" is in between those two, but I honestly don't feel like writing any for that section (it seems fine the way it is).**

**Another side note is that this chapter takes place during my "Nevada, USA" chapter (AKA Chapter 3), especially towards the end. This idea just came to me a couple of weeks ago. Someday I'm gonna put all these in chronological order again.**

**Happy early Thanksgiving!**

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**UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, USA**

**[The woman that has agreed to speak with me technically doesn't exist. Many people believe that she perished during the war. If word got out about her identity or her whereabouts, she would be "shot, stabbed, punched, kicked and spat on several times over, and then some", as she so eloquently puts it. While her bodyguard has allowed me to confirm the country, the exact location of her safehouse has been kept confidential. For the sake of clarity, as well as to keep her true identity a secret, I will refer to her as Wanda. At the request of her bodyguard, I use a notepad and pen rather than my recorder to catalogue our discussion. The small den seems appropriate enough for our talk.]**

First thing's first: I did NOT intend to cause any panic. Sure it was my job to inform the American people about what was really going, but now that I've had years to think about it, I've wondered if what I said could have been revealed sooner. Not by me, or any other new anchor for the matter, but just by the government. 'Cause at least then we would have had some sort of game plan, and maybe things wouldn't have gone so far south.

Like everyone else in my field, I had my head buried in the sand. I was too occupied with spending my time gathering information about the latest global warming statistic, or reporting which terrorist organization was responsible for the latest terror attack in the Middle East. I had nothing to worry about in terms of staying clean and healthy. I had taken my Phalanx shot, and maintained a relatively active lifestyle.

**_How did you obtain the information regarding the true nature of the plague?_ **

I had a close friend named Dan who worked in the government, up there with the really high ups. You know, like presidential people and whatnot. We would occasionally grab drinks together at a local sports bar in Washington, depending on what our schedules were like. Over time it pretty much became routine. We even had our own little booth that would be "reserved" for us. But the last two or three times we met up, he seemed...different.

When we would usually meet up, he would always be outgoing, always had something to say. You know, just an overall cheerful guy, especially when he was drunk. But those last couple of times, he was more quiet, more reserved. Even when he had alcohol in his blood he didn't say much. But that final night... **[She pauses.]**

After his fourth beer and second swig of whiskey, he slowly lifted his head and looked me dead in the eye. He starting telling me about how the only thing everyone in the White House was talking about was "containing outbreaks throughout the homeland". I questioned him about what he meant, to which he replied, in his familiar slurred speech, "The virus. Iiit's different than what p-people think. Phalanx...P-phalanx is bull shit. The Alpha teams can't cover our a-asses forever. This virus...W-whatever the hell it is, it's...it's causing people to come back from the dead."

At first he seemed like he was finished, but he kept going: "The Israelis were onto something. T-they knew what was coming. They're safe, while w-we're b-basically sitting ducks." He looked like he was about to pass out, when he suddenly jumped back to life. "It's happening everywhere; Africa, Brazil, Mexico. It's even happening in China. Thooose commie bastards thought they were clever in m-masking their activities by screwing around with Taiwan...We can't stop it...and it's only a matter of time before our luck runs out."

**_How did you react to this sudden revelation?_ **

Like how any sane person would at first: I thought he had seriously lost his shit. But I knew this guy; he never lied, and even when he was drunk, it made him no different. Regardless, I asked him, "Are you serious?", to which he drunkenly nodded.

"We can't keep this a secret foreveeerrrr," he slurred. "The report said we haave to t-take decisive action."

"What report?" I asked, now leaning in close with fascination.

Dan paused and shut his eyes, trying to remember the name of it. He opened his eyes and said, "It was the...Warmbrunn-Knight report." He then leaned in closer to me, his nose a couple of inches away from mine. I could smell his boozy breath.

"It's t-time we let the people know. Y-you need to gooo on the air, and you need to t-tell the American people what they need to know. You need to preach, you need to shout, you need to scream if you have to".

This was all just so much to take in. I had decided it was probably time to go. We paid for our drinks...well, I kinda had to help him pay as he was too far gone, I called Dan a cab, and I went back home.

That night I laid awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, contemplating on how I should utilize this new information. On one hand, maybe this was the one instant where my friend was just being silly, but this was once again cancelled out by the fact that lying was never his speciality.

I honestly didn't know what to do. But then I remembered something: Dan had spoken about this report. Maybe if I could get a hold of one of the authors, maybe I could get the proper information that I needed, straight from the horse's mouth!

The only problem was, my friend never said their full names. I picked up my phone and sent him a quick text, asking if I could get the full names of those two people. The whole time I spent waiting for him to reply, I worried that he was either asleep, or too wasted to compose a proper response.

But to my surprise, I received a reply about two minutes later. I looked at the screen, reading the words "Jurgen Warmbrunn and Paul Knight". There were a few letters that were repeated, given his state of mind, but nonetheless I was able to decipher it. I pulled out an old phone book and began looking for the two names. Warmbrunn didn't pop up; it wasn't until much later that I found out that Herr Warmbrunn lived in Israel.

But luckily I found the next best thing: Mr. Knight. And as it turned out, he lived in Bethesda, which was six miles away, practically in my own backyard!

_**Did you contact him immediately?** _

Not _per se_. I waited until the morning came. It would have been rude to wake him up at 2 o' clock in the morning. After having breakfast, I attempted to phone Mr. Knight. He picked up after about four rings. After telling him who I was, I asked if I could speak with him for a moment. I was kind of hoping he would be down for a face-to-face talk, but he said he was rather busy and if I had any questions for him, they would have to be asked over the phone.

I first asked him if he was one of the co-writers of the Warmbrunn-Knight report. He answered in the affirmative, but soon asked how I knew about it. I told him I had a friend in the government, and I heard him chuckle a faint phrase that sounded like "It's about damn time" on the other end.

I asked him if he could confirm that everything in the report was true. He said, "Sweetheart, all I can say is that you better get ready. Scott's wonder drug won't help, and it's very unlikely that anything else will either. My advice to you: go on the news and tell the people what they need to hear. Then you get out, and get as far away as you can. Go north, go west, I don't care what you have to do. Spill the beans, then get the hell out of dodge." It was dead air after that. He had hung up.

I sat there in silence, replaying the conversation in my head. So it was true then; we were in for a shit storm, and hardly anyone knew it was coming.

 **[She rubs her forehead.]** Will you excuse for a moment? [She rises from her seat and retreats to the kitchen. She returns ten seconds later with a small glass of water and two ibuprofen tablets. She downs the medicine before setting the glass on the adjacent table.] Anyway, during the drive to the station the next morning, I kept going over over in my head what I would say. As I put my car in park and walked inside, my hands started to get sweaty, my heart rate increasing.

In the main newsroom, I looked all around me, watching everyone scramble around doing their various tasks. A part of me wanted to turn around, leave and never come back, but neither my conscious nor my legs would allow it. What the government was doing wasn't right, and if it meant losing my job, so be it. My duty was to inform people, not to withhold crucial information. I sat down at my usual seat, I was handed my morning reports, and I rehearsed in my head what I was going to say.

Soon enough, the lights intensified, the cameraman aimed his instrument at me, and just above me, the green words, "ON THE AIR" appeared on teleprompter above my head. I took a deep breath and gazed into the camera, a fake smile plastered on my face.

"Good morning, I'm **[Legal name withheld.]** , and this is your morning news," I started. But nothing else came after that...I froze up. I glanced down at my reports, then back up at the camera. Like all other news networks, I had a monitor displaying the scripted report off-camera in case if I forgot what I was saying. The monitor displayed dialogue talking about the latest news of the upcoming presidential election in Pakistan, not that it means anything.

**_No it's fine, any information is important._ **

Glad you think so. Anyway, I was just sitting there, like a lump on a log, my brain and mouth refusing to cooperate, or even operate at all for that matter. I realized that every second I wasted, was a second I could have spent doing what I had to do. Eyeing my coworkers one last time, I took a deep breath before turning my attention back to the camera in front of me.

"The drug Phalanx, which many Americans have been relying on to prevent catching the strain of African rabies, is nothing more but a placebo. The victims affected by this virus are not rabid, but are in fact, deceased persons that have returned to life."

My team behind the camera were urging me to continue, and I could tell by the looks of their faces they were all wondering, What the hell is this bitch talking about?

Ignoring their confused stares and murmurs, I pushed on. "Breckinridge Scott, the "Phalanx King", has marketed a false sense of security in order to make a quick buck. For many months, the federal government has been secretly trying to cover up outbreaks throughout the country via covert Alpha teams to eliminate the threat. I'm sure many of you think that this is some sort of prank or false report, but I unfortunately cannot assure that this is the case."

By that point, things were really starting to get heated. The once whispered murmurs had now morphed into audible expressions ranging from, "What the hell is this?" to "Is she serious?" Some were confused, others were rather panicked. Before I could get another word out, I felt a pair of hands wrap around my right arm and I was pulled off to the side by one of the producers. As we cut to commercial, he pulled me into one of the back rooms, practically throwing me in as the shut the door behind him.

He started questioning me about what the fuck was I doing, saying stuff like that on air for all of America to hear. I defended my case, stating that I had a reliable source that informed me of the situation. That hairy, beer-gutted fuck just laughed in my face. He said he didn't care if I had gotten the news from the president himself, that I shouldn't have gone off script, and now thanks to me, I probably started mass panic. **[She lets out a soft chuckle.]** Oh, if only he could see how right he was...

He dismissed me for the day, telling me to come back in the morning "with a clear head and professional attitude." Can you believe that bull shit? Looking back, I kind of understand his perspective, but still, he did it without a second thought. I went out to my shitty little car, hopped in, and proceeded to drive home.

On the way, out of curiosity, I turned on my radio to my station. I wanted to see what they would put on the air after what I had just pulled. I had just cranked up the volume when suddenly my car went spinning. I hit a lamppost, the front of the car partially caved in. I weakly pushed the airbag out of my face, and I saw a small smear of blood on the now-deflated bag. I vaguely remember getting out of my car, seeing the delivery truck that had hit me. It was on it's side just down Independence Avenue, it's driver struggling to stand as other tried to help him.

I looked around me, and across the street it looked like the grocery store was having a riot. I could faintly see through the windows that people were running around franticly, grabbing whatever they could and running out. Two people came running out, plastic bags full of stuff, while one of them carried a baby.

I stumbled over to the curb, and I was about to enter a pharmacy, when something came crashing through the window. It landed just inches away from me, making a loud clang as it did so. It was a gum ball machine, and all the colorful balls began rolling off the side walk and into the street. Before I could even set foot inside the store, a hooded person came running out, a shiny revolver in one hand, and a paper bag full of what looked like prescriptions meds. His eyes went wide when he recognized me, and suddenly aimed his gun.

"You...You're the lady from the news," he said. "So it's true then, ain't it? The wonder drug's horse shit?"

I couldn't speak. I was afraid to say anything, afraid to say something that would give him a reason to shoot me.

He pulled back the hammer, and my breathing got heavier. "Aren't we?!" he shouted. He had started walking toward me ever since he saw me. I had in turn starting limping backward into the street, not even looking to make sure no other cars were coming. By this point, both of us we're standing on the side of the road.

"Look mister, can you please let me go?" I pleaded, slowly turning so my back was to the alley beside the pharmacy. I also had stepped back onto the curb, to which he responded by taking another step toward me.

"Bitch, if you don't answer the fucking question I swear to God I'm gonna-" He never got to finish his threat. He didn't see the Mercedes-Benz speeding down the road. His body went flying twenty feet forward. I shrieked for the second time that morning. The passenger window rolled down, to reveal a concerned Dan behind the wheel.

"Get in!" he yelled. I wasted no time in getting into the car and we sped down the avenue, away from the scene.

Neither of us said a word as we navigated around the city. I was surprised at how quickly anarchy reared its chaotic head. Store were already being looted, car were being stolen, people were killing each other. Some of them weren't killing others for supplies or anything, they were just killing them for the sake of it. Maybe they figured if Phalanx didn't work, then who's to say that everyone is infected? "Wannabe Rambos", as you might say.

When we arrived at the White House, the staff and faculty were struggling to keep things in order. I stayed close to Dan as we ran through the building. I didn't know where we were going, but we eventually found ourselves in the Oval Office, the president at his desk with his staff all around him.

When he noticed we had entered, he looked straight at me and said, "Aw, so there's the little lady who started this riot." I know now that it was a bad joke, but it didn't help me feel any less guilty about it. It kind of reminded me of the quote that Lincoln told Harriet Beecher Stowe **[1]**.

**_What happened to you after that? Did you stick with Dan?_ **

**[She nods.]** Yes. He was actually the one to suggest to the president that they keep me safe. I tried to talk him down from it, but he ignored me. He made it clear to the president that if I were to be let out into the world, who knows how many people would recognize me and come after me in anger? The Big Man seemed skeptical at first, but seeing as though things weren't exactly in the most organized way at that moment, he caved in and had me put in "protective custody". When they gave up D.C. and booked it west, I came with them. I stayed under the president's, and later his successor's, protection.

As for Dan? Well... **[She pauses, but maintains her composure.]** He was killed in a small riot in Honolulu a few months after getting there. Even though I told him time and time again, I am forever grateful for what he did, and I couldn't have asked for a better friend.

 **[She hoists herself upright in her armchair.]** Now, I guess you're wondering why would I be protected, even if after all the shit I stirred up. Why haven't they tried me? Why haven't they executed me? To be fair, I'm no Breck Scott, but a part of me thinks that I deserve some form of punishment. **[She pauses briefly, then shrugs.]** Or maybe _this_ is my punishment. I can't go anywhere, I can't do anything. Ironic, isn't it?

**_What is?_ **

The fact that for opening my mouth to inform the masses, I must spend the rest of my days shut out from the masses, with hardly anyone to talk to, other than Reg over there. [She points to her the man standing in the doorway, his back resting against the frame and his vision switching between me and the front door beside him.]

Some people say that they would rather be dead than spend their lives alone. But, I've grown to accept it. Better than being in jail, right?

**[1]- "So this is the little woman who started this Great War." -Abraham Lincoln (supposedly) said this to Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, during their interview in 1862. The 1852 anti-slavery novel caused uproar amongst the Southern United States, and the issue of slavery would later serve as one of the main causes of the American Civil War (1861-1865).**

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**And so with that, the "Great Panic" chapters are finished! I am not going to do a lot of "Turning the Tide" chapters, maybe like one or two at most.**


	10. Africa (Warnings)

**Okay I know I said I would do "Turning the Tide" next, but this "Warnings" idea just came to me one day. Enjoy.**

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**BARRANQUILLA, NUEVA GRAN COLOMBIA**

**[Business is running as usual in the country's most populous port city. The people seem to be in pleasant spirits, as the nation's newly elected president has recently declared that eight new oil wells have been opened in the eastern part of the country, far from Colombia's pre-war border. Alejandro Ortega and I relax on his apartment balcony, overlooking the bay.]**

When you think of Colombian criminals, or just Latin American criminals in general, you probably imagine either a drug lord or human smuggler. There's not without merit, given our nation's rather tumultuous history during the twentieth century. Escobar's drug empire and the rebel insurgence have both left a dark mark on our international reputation. So at the start of the early cases, we weren't exactly in the best position. **[He grins.]** Can't say that now, can we?

I was an arms-trafficker back in the day. While my pre-war profession was not as documented in the mainstream media as, let's say drug traffickers, or even human traffickers, it still played a major role in helping certain places stay stable or unstable, depending on who my client was. I first got started in the late-80s, selling weapons to the FARC **[1]** rebels in the north, and when the 90s rolled around, I expanded my business beyond the Americas. And yes, you heard me correctly. I did in fact sell guns and bullets to people to destabilize my own country, but at the time, I couldn't give hot blue shit about what happened. I wasn't even living there anyway; when I wasn't selling AKs or M60s to some backwater gang on the other side of the globe, I was having crazy, drug-fueled sex parties at my Mexican beach house.

_**What kinds of clients did you conduct business with?** _

All kinds. Drug cartels, warlords, rogue separatist groups like the Basque ETA **[2]**. Africa and the Middle East were my biggest markets. So many nations filled with so much hatred between various ethnic and political groups, and with little to no hope of putting an end to it by their national governments in a short amount of time, it was practically Heaven for people like me.

You had al-Qaeda groups in Iraq fighting you Americans, you had Hamas agents in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories waging perpetual war against the Israelis...I even sold small arms to the Ku Klux Klan and other Neo-Nazi, white nationalist groups in the States. **[He chuckles.]** What I could never understand was why would they need more? America has the highest rate of private gun ownership per capita in the whole world, so would these swastika-tattooed, wife beater-wearing sons of bitches needed more in the first place. But then I remembered that a good chunk of them were ex-convicts, so getting their hands on guns legally was challenging. But I didn't worry too much about; at the end of the day, they got their guns, I got my money.

With that being said, I personally never felt responsible for any of the bloodshed and misery that my job caused. I was there to do one thing: to fatten my bank account. I had never much consideration for others. I guess that's a result of my poverty-stricken childhood in Neiva. Always looking for a chance to earn a few extra pesos, always looking for an opportunity...

**[He leans further back in his seat.]**

Have you ever heard of Viktor Bout? You know, the Russian arms dealer who was once called the "Merchant of Death"? If you haven't, there's a really good film partially based on his career. _Lord of War_ , I believe it's called. Anyway, he got his nickname as a result of both his international operations and impressively massive clientele. I once did business with him, you know. No really, I did! While we weren't partners in the traditional sense, we got along better then our competitors did with us. While he sold Kalashnikovs to Sierra Leoneans, I sold RPGs to Afghani Mujahideen. But please remember, we were not friends, more like "respectable rivals", for lack of a better term.

**[He leans forward in his chair and spits over the rail.]**

But you're not down here to talk about that, I know. You're probably wondering when did I first pick up the scent of something amiss.

**[Before I can answer...]**

The moment I began suspect something was when I was in Nigeria, attempting to strike a new deal with the Boko Haram unit in the area. They had placed a rather large order; twice as many grenades, and nearly thrice as much ammunition. I even had an order placed for a bunch of anti-tank grenades, which was rare considering the terrain.

_**Was it then you realized things didn't seem quite right?** _

Not immediately. I was too happy that I was going to get an even bigger ass-load of money than I usually got that I didn't think too much of it. When I arrived at the location, this humid, miserable jungle, in the middle of the afternoon, the clockwork routine went as usual: I introduced myself, I showed the client the products, and I received my pay. I was just about to leave when I noticed something in the background. Two fighters were shouting something in their native tongue and were scurrying down the hill. I didn't see what they were shooting at; I was too occupied counting the stack of Nigerian nairas to make sure I wasn't being cheated.

I boarded my plane out of the area immediately afterward. I didn't like to stay too long in conflicted territory, you understand. As the plane began going down runway, I looked out the window to see the two soldiers returning. One was helping the other one walk; he appeared to be injured. From that distance I couldn't make out the injury itself, but the fucker looked pretty banged up; even from that far away I could see the blood staining the man's clothes. The guy in charge running up to them was the last thing I saw before I was up in the air.

_**Did that concern you?** _

Hardly. They knew what they were getting themselves into. For all I knew, the poor bastard probably got shot by government forces, or maybe attacked by a wild animal. That's what made me sleep like a baby on the flight home.

My next deal was in Zimbabwe, selling high-powered rifles to poachers. That was the moment of truth right there, the moment that I realized something was wrong, or were going to get bad. Unlike my previous deal, this exchange wasn't illegal per se, as elephant hunting was a popular activity in the area. Yes, that sleezeball of a president actually allowed that shit.

After the transaction and shaking hands with the buyer, I went back to my Jeep to count the diamonds I had just received. I heard the crack of one my products as one of the buyer's goons tested it out on a passing gazelle. But what happened next was what really stole the show. A herd of elephants were stampeding toward us, honking their trunks wildly. I ducked down in time to see the herd run past us, dust clouding my sight. When the dust settled, I looked down to see the buyer, bloody, mangled, and lifeless on the ground, his rifle completely smashed beside him.

I looked up ahead, and I could easily make out the shapes of four or five people shambling toward us. One of the poachers raised his newly acquired hunting rifle, chambered a round, and ordered the people in broken English to halt. The shapes continued toward us, ignoring the man's orders. The man soon fired, sending a bullet straight into the man's chest. Now these were .30-06 rounds, powerful enough to knock a man off his feet if hit by one. But this man...he just stumbled back a few feet, then continued stumbling forward as if nothing had happened.

The other poachers raised their guns and fired as well. I myself withdrew my own nine millimeter just to be safe. Most of their bullets passed harmlessly through, but one of them managed to hit one of them, a woman, in the side of the head, blowing her brains out as she collapsed onto the ground. Once they got the idea, the others went down in seconds. I didn't have to fire a shot, praise God.

This was before the outbreak in Cape Town, you see, so the incident went virtually unnoticed. However, rumors began to spread among my fellow traffickers about their clients engaging in direct conflict immediately after purchasing our goods. This wasn't unusual, but what made everyone scratch their heads was why these people didn't go down when shot anywhere but the head. But what really made things weirder was either my clients or competition seeing people wandering around in places they weren't supposed to be in.

_**Such as?** _

Like people with barely any clothes on wandering around through the frozen wastelands of Kazakhstan, or people wandering into animal reserves in Zambia and the animals going crazy. You know, weird shit like that.

What I was doing might have done some good if we knew what we were up against, however. If we had known who, or what we were dealing with, maybe my illegal trafficking could have saved countless lives.

_**It's not your fault, you know.** _

I know, I know, but I just can't help it. I'm sure everyone thinks that from time to time. I wouldn't say it's survivor's guilt, but it's definitely something that bugs you, no matter how much booze you chug.

**[1]- Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia: A far-left, communist guerilla group that promoted agrarianism and anti-imperialism that was first formed in 1964. Their main activities included illegal mining, kidnapping for ransom, and production and distribution of illegal narcotics.**

**[2]- Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Homeland and Liberty): A far-left Basque nationalist organization that sought to form an independent Basque state in northeastern Spain.**


	11. Aztlan (Turning the Tide)

**And so, the "Turning the Tide" chapters begin. As I've said before, I might not write any chapters for "Home Front USA", as I might go straight to "Around the World, And Above", but we'll see where things go. Enjoy!**

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**San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Aztlán**

**[Jeremías Alcazar-Ortiz is spending today like he does every other day: sitting cross-legged in the shade, playing his twelve-string guitar for passersby in the main square outside the Cathedral of Saint Michael the Archangel. Even though he claims he does this simply out of boredom, and never begs, people often leave him a few coins or bank notes by his feet whenever they pass by him anyway. His faded straw hat obscures his face from both myself and everyone else around him. I sit on the end of the bench next to him, telling him he's welcome to come sit with me. He says nothing as he continues picking the worn-out strings. I offer him a bite of my street tamale. Again, he says nothing. After a few more moments of silence, without warning, he suddenly stops playing and begins to speak, avoiding eye contact.]**

The only thing you could hear that day was the helicopters, and the only thing you could smell was the blazing fires all throughout the city. You could also smell the pyres topped with infected victims, the bodies charred beyond recognition as the flames cooked them to a crisp.

Things were crazy, hardly anyone knew what was going on, or what what was going to happen. All I knew was that we needed to act quickly if we were ever going to get anything done.

Just like your neighbor to the north, our southern border was being violated by scores of invaders. The undead swine were pushing up through Central America, a great deal of them coming from as far as northern South America. The only upside was that we didn't have any trigger-happy _gringos_ crossing our border...no offense.

**[I raise my hand, signifying a non-verbal "None taken".]**

By that point, there was no way of saving any portion of the south. Our forces were too weakened, too demoralized. Too many of our own reanimated citizens, and too many invading from the south...With the exception of a few isolated cases of civilians making stands at various ancient structures, such as Uxmal, the army had given up on even creating "bait zones" in those areas, or even attempting to control the oncoming hordes. "Too many risks," they kept saying, "we don't want to end up like the Yankees".

They weren't wrong, you know. The armed forces were on the verge of complete and total annihilation. Two units were overwhelmed in Puebla, and only two privates of another unit were able to make it out of Mérida. But the one everyone kept talking about at that time was Oaxaca. **[He snorts.]** Oh _Dios_ how they loved to bitch about Oaxaca. "Oh, if only we had more men!" "If only we had better defenses!" "If only the air force wasn't so occupied further north!" "If only, if only, if only!"

At that point, the army had already received orders to begin pulling out from their current positions and head straight for the sanctuaries being set up in the north. Many were mainly being set up in Baja California, and a further handful was also being set up in an area that encompassed the entire northwestern part of the country, with the entire safe zone placing its corners at Los Mochis, Juárez, Tijuana, and ending with Cabo San Lucas on the tip of Baja. Those cities were specifically chosen because if the Americans could clear everything west of the Rockies, then, by default, we would be safe too.

And before you ask me why didn't we try to stabilize the capital, allow me to enlighten you a bit. If you know anything about the topographical layout of our country, our capital is situated in the middle of a valley, surrounded by mountains. Even in prewar times the city was prone to pollution being contained within the city limits. The wind patterns also make it hard for the smog to go somewhere else. And with all the bodies and buildings burning, the government decided to relocate elsewhere. Better to give orders when your not coughing your lungs out. I know I'm being a little dramatic, but that's the truth.

The troops stationed in the capital were barely keeping the trains running on schedule. This one unit...I don't think you could even call it a unit by that point, had rounded up whatever people they had managed to find from the four surrounding blocks and had put them inside the Metropolitan Cathedral. With its high towers, its spacious design, it was one of the more ideal spots for civilian sanctuary. But there was also another underlying significance to it.

_**Oh?** _

One of the aspects of the Pacheco Proposal **[1]** was to escort civilians to either places of worship or any building with physical significance and/or security. I guess they figured by corralling people into whatever church they could find, the civilians wouldn't freak out as much. Maybe by having them in God's house, they thought, might have been spiritually comforting. I can still remember their faces, these little old ladies with studded rosaries wrapped around their hands, while parents tried to comfort their children.

I was arguing with Father Gomez, the short, pudgy, mustachioed priest of the cathedral. He kept demanding to know why these people were being corralled in here. "Why are you keeping us here?" he asked rather angrily. "Why aren't you escorting us out of here? The damned are upon us!"

Now, I wasn't a soldier. I was just this scrawny police officer who was tasked with helping the army and Federales round up whatever civilians remained. I told him that I myself didn't know for certain, as I was told by my superiors that the army had ordered for whatever living citizens were left in the city to be escorted to the aforementioned locations.

He didn't like my response, his voice raising even more. "What the hell do you mean by that?!" he yelled in my face. Before I could come up with another response, a young woman came up to us. She looked tired, her face dirty and her raven hair a mess. She was holding a toddler in her arms.

"Please officer," she said, "My child is hungry. What are we going to do?" I studied her face; she couldn't be older than twenty-five or so.

I put my hand on her shoulder and said, "Don't worry, _señorita_ , everything is going to be fine. Remember, you are secure, because there is hope." **[2]** I thought it would calm her more if I recited some scripture, but I only remembered that one verse because my grandmother used to say that. I spent my childhood in Chiapas, back in the 90s. The Zapatistas were causing havoc in my neighborhood basically every day. My grandmother would often hold me while my parents held my brothers. She would stroke my hair and whisper that same verse in my ear as we would wait for the violence to die down.

Before I could say more, I was felt someone grab my arm and escort me away, leaving the young mother and Father Gomez. Whoever grabbed me spun me around to face them. I could see he was a corporal, and given the skeleton crew of men, he appeared to be the one in charge. He said that I was needed four blocks away immediately. I asked him if he had clearance from the chief of police, but he ignored me. He then proceeded to shove me into the back of an awaiting truck, and soon we were on the move. The entire time while they were still in sight, I could not take my eyes off of the woman and Father Gomez, who were still standing outside, with the dead only yards away. Even as they got smaller and smaller, I could barely make out the doubt and worry in their eyes.

**[A middle aged man walks by us, silently tossing silver coin at Señor Alcazar-Ortiz's feet without looking before continuing on his way.]**

The truck eventually pulled up to the _Iglesia de San Felipe de Jesus_. I was shoved out the back by the stock of the corporal's Xiuhcoatl **[3]** , where I was met with the sight of a large police van. My fellow officers were escorting people out of the van. They were handcuffed, and most of them looked dirty and ragged.

_**What were they doing with the criminals?** _

That's what I wanted to know. I knew for a fact most of my colleagues would have been more than happy to leave some of those pricks to die, if given the opportunity. So I walked up to one of my fellow deputies. I asked what the hell were they doing, to which he replied that this was also part of the government's plan: to use our incarcerated felons as bait. _Good_ , I thought, _these sorry fucks will finally be doing something useful with their lives._

I helped them escort the remaining inmates into the building, but soon after, the same corporal ordered all the officers back inside. He shook the sheriff's hand, thanking him and his men for their service. I couldn't help but notice that one of the remaining privates was hopping into the van, revving up the engine. I asked the corporal what his man was doing with our van. After briefly turning to look at the aforementioned vehicle, he turned back to us and said, very matter-of-factly, "We need it, you don't." And with that, he turned and proceeded to walk away. The sheriff tried to grab him, probably in an attempt to get him to explain himself. I was correct, as he ordered the man to tell him why they were seizing our only transport.

The corporal looked him dead in the face and said, "You are going to stay here and keep these men in line. This is your duty, and you will act accordingly," before leaving. Two of his men shut the doors in our faces.

 _Are they for real?_ I thought. Surely they did not intend on leaving us here with these pigs. I tried to find some logical explanation for the corporal's statement, trying in vain to find some reason to not think that we were pawns in the government's plan. But of course, I came up with nothing. The other officers began arguing with the sheriff. Most of these men you wouldn't think twice about crossing, but a few of them were clearly worried about being here with the convicts, even more worried about them then the dead closing in on our position.

I turned to the convicts, my hand on my holster in case they tried anything. Most of them were unemotional, the older ones I mean, while the others look concerned. One of them, this poor kid who couldn't have been older than sixteen or so, started softly weeping to himself.

The sheriff clearly looked like he was at a loss for words. He tried to put on a brave face, murmuring to me and his underlings to remain composed. He then turned to the convicts and told them that we would be looking after them for the time being.

I didn't notice what was about to happen next, but the sheriff fell forward to the floor, unconscious. One of the convicts had snuck out of everyone's view when we were distracted by the corporal earlier. He now stood over the sheriff, a candlestick in his restrained hands. One officer tried to draw his gun, but soon another convict threw his cuffed hands over the man's head and proceeded to strangle him. A bullet from his gun went flying, striking the weeping teen in the chest.

The scuffle ended rather quickly; three officers and four convicts dead, the sheriff knocked out cold, and two officers injured, with me being one of them. My vision was blurry, and my head ached after being shoved headfirst into a wall. The doors were left wide open, the wails of the dead growing closer. Our guns had been taken, as well as whatever protective gear some of the deputies had been wearing.

I weakly got to my feet, noticing the other wounded officer on the other side of the room, next to the dead teen. He was clutching his bloody stomach. Probably a gun shot, I thought. I stumbled out the door, and began making my way down the sidewalk until I came to the crosswalk. I saw the dead coming from the east, advancing toward my position.

All of a sudden, I felt the ground began to vibrate. I looked around and saw parked cars shaking, a few of them had their alarms go off. I heard a hard crash behind me, and I turned to see a large piece of stone had fallen off a building. I looked at the building ahead of me in time to see the front windows shatter. It didn't take long for me to realize what was happening.

_**An earthquake?** _

Precisely. I think I was on the pavement in a matter of seconds. I grabbed onto a fire hydrant, attempting to steady myself. [He pauses.] But that was just the start. Even with the ground shaking uncontrollably, I felt the ground beneath my feet cave in slightly. Suddenly, and without warning, the ground caved in completely beneath me, and for two seconds I was in free fall. I instinctively reached out and felt my hand wrap around a pipe sticking out from under the road. I looked below just in time to see an oil tanker fall into the hole, immediately followed by a blazing car that had been resting near the edge of the hole. I didn't know how deep the hole was, but the two vehicles hit the bottom in just a matter of seconds. And I'm pretty sure you can guess what happened next.

Thankfully the blast only singed my clothes just a bit, nothing too intense to do any actual harm. I honestly felt like I was hanging over the mouth of Hell, its flames never seceding. I had seen my fair share of sinkholes in my life, but this was something you would see in probably a disaster movie or something. So needless to say, I think that nobody could have predicted it would happen now at that exact moment.

I was beginning to lose the feeling in my arms, afraid that at any moment my strained muscles would give in and I would fall to my doom. I tried to hoist myself up, ultimately gaining my footing. I could see a cable of some sort hanging over the edge. I jumped and threw out my arms, grabbing onto the cable and hoisting myself up, to which I saw that my saving grace was a power cable from a fallen electrical post.

After climbing out of the hole, and thanking whatever deity is up there that there was no electrical currency left in the cable, I laid on my back, exhausted and weak. I just laid there, staring up at the sky that was slowly darkening from the fires' smoke. After a few moments, I sat up, to see the dead falling into the inferno below. A religious person might say it was like the damned were falling into Hell itself, but all I saw was the enemy being neutralized. I didn't know how long that fire would burn, or if the dead would eventually just pile up on top of each other when the fire did eventually die, but it saved my ass. It saved the army's asses.

Not that it really mattered later. Securing the areas of the sanctuary bordering the United States was no easy task, when you had both zombies and gangbangers to deal with. Thank God the Yankee army was able to execute their sweep plans. Now that these pricks had been dealt with, we could now focus on dealing with clearing our new home further north.

I limped toward an overturned bicycle in the middle of the street. That's what I used to get the hell out of there, to try to catch up to the fleeing army. Even though I would later face repercussions for abandoning my "post", it was better than waiting for death. Fighting for your life is better than sitting around waiting for death. If you take anything from this, it's this: _anything_ is better than waiting for death.

**[1]- Mexico's version of the Redeker Plan.**

**[2]- "You will be secure, because there is hope; you will look about you and take your rest in safety." From the Holy Bible, Book of Job, chapter 11, verse 18.**

**[3]- FX-05 Xiuhcoatl: A Mexican assault rifle, named so after the mythological Aztec serpent who was said to be the spirit of Xiuhtecuhtli, the Aztec deity of fire. Some have compared the weapon's design to the German Heckler and Koch G36.**


	12. New Zealand (Turning the Tide)

**CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND**

**[For a late Saturday afternoon, the city is unusually quiet. Robert Akara owns and operates "Bobby's Bakery". Despite having two other delivery boys, he likes to run deliveries himself on occasion. "It brings smiles to people's faces, when they see the owner actually doing work," he says, "It lets them know he busts his ass just as much as his workers." Since business is dead, and closing time is slowly approaching, we converse in his apartment that sits above the store. When I ask about who will watch the shop downstairs, he replies with, "Mitchell's got it. He may be sixteen, but he's reliable." We talk at the small table in the kitchen while his five-year-old granddaughter Katie watches cartoons in the adjacent living room. It's hard to imagine someone like him taking up such a profession postwar, given his heroic actions during his country's short-lived war with the undead, but I refrain from openly questioning it.]**

One Tree Hill. That's where I found myself on that windy, sunny afternoon. I wanted to run, flee to the south like my neighbors. But I'm glad I didn't run; it feels good to be a part of an iconic piece of not only the war itself, but to also be a piece of _Aotearoa's_ recent history.

The virus was low-key in New Zealand. Compared to our neighbor to the west, we lived a life of semi-isolation in terms of global politics, and tourist travel was comparatively low key. With that being said, our outbreaks were not as large and not as terrible. But regardless, we soon faced the same problem that made Iran and Pakistan blow each other to high Hell: refugees.

They all came exclusively from Australia, bringing the plague with them. And I guess you can assume where they were heading...

**_Auckland?_ **

The vast majority, yes. Of course you had some go to Wellington, but the vast majority went to Auckland, as it was closer.

_**What about the outbreaks prior to the refugees?** _

With the exception of those two aforementioned cities, outbreaks were virtually non-existent. Well, in the North Island at least. There had been a very small handful of reported cases in the South Island, mostly tourist towns and whatnot.

**_But what about major ones, like in Auckland?_ **

The first and only outbreak in Auckland before the arrival of the refugees wasn't "major" by your standards, but to a nation of only a little over four million people, we considered it bad, especially considering the fact that the city hosted one fourth of the entire population. And like many other outbreaks across the globe, it started in the medical wards. People turning, infecting the nurses and orderlies, overwhelming the doctors as they tried to call for help or defend themselves. Then there were the cases in the South, where police tried to arrest or subdue the "rabid attackers", as the locals called them.

Wellington knew they needed to think of something fast if the country was going to save itself. Especially considering the fact that our ground force only consisted of roughly nine thousand men, and only a handful of reserves. The first order of business was ceasing all refugee traffic coming into the country.

**_Was that tricky?_ **

Oh God no. Getting in touch with the Aussies wasn't difficult by any means. Our relationship with Canberra was extremely close, with some political commentators going so far as to call us "best friends". I wouldn't go that far, but you get what I'm trying to say. The problem was sorted out via a simple phone call between the two prime ministers, and within a matter of days, the boats and planes stopped coming. We no longer had to worry about outside forces from that moment forward.

_**That simple?** _

**[He snorts.]** Honestly, people think communication is so damn difficult. Well it isn't. I understand people were panicking, and communicating with your neighbors probably wasn't at the top of most countrys' priority lists, but it doesn't hurt. I understand Iran had way more people entering into her territory, and yes we were an island nation compared to their relatively large land mass, but even then all they had to do was maintain their composure.

However, despite the diplomatic success with the Aussies, it did not stop the infection from overwhelming more and more hospitals.

_**What about the capital, Wellington I mean?** _

Not as bad as Auckland. But when the second hospital was overrun in the capital, the government realized they had to take decisive action. The prime minister made an emergency statement before parliament, saying that if we waited any longer, our tiny army would be wiped out, and then the whole North Island would collapse. And soon the South Island will fall.

I watched the emergency broadcast channel, listening to his speech. He claimed that the outbreak in Christchurch had already been neutralized by a coalition of local militiamen and whatever police that were still alive, in preparation for the government's arrival. He also decreed that the South Island had plenty of space for the remaining citizens in the North, so if we left now, and caught our collective breath once we arrived, we could get organized, and then eventually wipe out whatever outbreaks that still remained in the south, the Redeker plan would not have to be an option. One less thing on your collective consciousness, I suppose.

I had packed my bags and was waiting for a fellow Maori brother to come pick me up. We were planning on booking it to the port. I was hoping that all the civilian boats weren't gone yet, and I was especially hoping the federal vessels weren't restrictive on who could come aboard.

_**Why not the airport?** _

Think about it: if someone were to reanimate on a boat, and if you didn't have any kind of weapon, all you could do was toss them overboard. But on a plane, in an enclosed space, so high up, and if more than one had turned... **[He shakes his head.]** No, couldn't risk it.

While I was watching the TV, I received a text from my friend, Harry, alerting me that he had arrived outside my flat. I turned off the TV and hurried down the stairs, through the lobby, and into the sunlight. I hopped into Harry's car, throwing my stuff in the backseat before we sped down the street. I asked him if he was ready to get the hell out of there, but he shook his head, saying that we were going somewhere else.

I was confused. Why were we going in the opposite direction of the sea? Why were we heading for the outskirts rather than the ports? I demanded he tell me where he was taking us. Without turning to face me, he said that a bunch of Maori were gathering at One Tree Hill, for a final stand against the _ora mate_ **[1]**.

Now, I was proud of my heritage, and still am, but I thought that this was preposterous. I asked him if he was serious, to which he confirmed. Harry proceeded to tell me that if this worked, we would be national heroes or something like that. I am not a prideful man, you see, so I wasn't really buying it.

Harry could tell I was skeptical, but he said that his dad and uncle were going to be there, and handed me his phone. I breezed through his text messages with his father, and they confirmed Harry's statement. I grunted that I didn't sign up for this, to which Harry replied, "Yeah, well, the world didn't want this shit either."

We arrived at our destination in no time flat. We parked on the side of the road and exited the car. Despite the name, the real tree had been removed years ago. Now a stone obelisk stood in its place. I could already see a collection of people further up the hill. Harry asked if I had any weapons on me. I replied that I had a few in my bag, to which Harry said to get one out that I can use skillfully. I had a hunting knife, to which I strapped to my hip, but I also had something else: a _patu_.

A _patu_ is a small club that is used as a striking weapon, with this particular one being made out of jade. It was an heirloom, having been passed down from my grandfather, who carried it as a personal memento during his service in the Maori Battalion during the Second World War. I never intended on using it if I ever made to the south. Before he died, my father taught me how to use it, just for the sake of it. Or maybe he did it to instill some cultural pride in me, I don't know. Either way, it was really just something I couldn't live without. But regardless, I figured now would be a good enough time as any to try and put those teachings to the test.

When we arrived at the top, I couldn't believe how many had shown up. Five hundred Maori, no more no less. The city had a population of roughly a hundred and twenty thousand Maori residents, but I figured most of them didn't want to take their chances. Well, these honorable fuckers did, and they will without a doubt go down in our people's history as some of the greatest warriors to ever live.

I recognized some of them almost immediately. There was Mister Jenkins, the short, round, fifty-three-year-old man who ran the local flower shop. He had ditched his store uniform in exchange for a tank top and sweat pants, his long, dark hair tied up in a bun. There was Marcus Manawa, an acquaintance of mine from high school who lived four doors down from me. He was bare chested, showing off his muscles. And there was also Mister Wanui, the local self-defense instructor. He too was bare chested, the traditional Maori tattoos that covered his abdomen glistening in the sun.

At first, I thought One Tree Hill was just chosen by these men because of heritage reasons. But I soon found out that one of the organizers of this gathering was Major Peter Hautu. He was one of the highest ranking members of the New Zealand army, and well-respected among both his fellow servicemen and fellow Maori brothers. Compared to most of the other men, who were either barechested or semi-clothed up in some way, he was dressed in full military uniform. He told me directly that he had been in contact with the other units still in the area, and that he had been given specific orders to spearhead this operation.

As I observed the other men, I saw some of them had brought modern weapons, like machetes and knives, but a good chunk of them had brought their own traditional weapons, like we did. Most of them were barechested like Mister Wanui, showing off their muscles, or in some cases their fat bellies, as well as Maori tattoos.

At three o' clock sharp, Major Hautu climbed on top of a parked car, where he could see all of us. Next to the car was some kind of large device that almost looked like a MRL **[2]**. He then went to this speech about the rest of the army, and to a larger extent the whole nation, was counting on us. He explained that the army had agreed to let him and some of his men come here to assist us as part of the army's plan.

_**Which was?** _

Dividing up the undead ranks. The regular army would lure half of zombified Auckland toward the coast, while we lured the remaining half here. He further explained that the plan was to lure the two groups was to fire fireworks to attract them, just like the Ethiopians did in Addis Ababa. The army would fire first, then we would follow suit shortly after that. This was done for two reasons: to relieve some stress from the regular army, and also give us a chance to be "badass". Those weren't his exact words, you understand, his words were more proper and less juvenile, but I'm just telling it how I saw it.

At then end of his monologue, he reached for his own _patu_ at his hip, held high in the air, and proclaimed, "TODAY, WE FIGHT FOR OUR HOMELAND!" You should have heard the uplifting chant; hundreds of Maori happily and confidently hoisting their weapons high in the air, the loud, collective roar signifying that we were ready for battle. Despite the fact that I was rallied up by the speech, a part of me was scared. I never dreamed of having to face the dead, especially not like this. But I reminded myself that this was for the greater good, so I needed to ditch my fear and man up.

After we proceeded down the hill and away from the obelisk, Major Hautu gave an order into his walkie talke, and soon I heard a noise in the distance, and we all looked to the sky. Far away, we saw a firework explode in the sky.

_**But did it ever occur to the high command that the entire horde would be diverted to the sea?** _

It was a possibility, yes, and Major Hautu even discusses that in his autobiography. It's a great piece of work, you should get yourself a copy sometime. But yes, that did cross our minds at some point. But I think the army was just confident in their plan. Maybe if they kept the number of distraction fireworks to a minimum, then maybe the sound and sight would only attract the rear of the herd. Almost immediately after that, I heard something from behind. I turned around, as did mostly everyone around me. We saw a firework explode above the obelisk, combusting into a red and orange dazzle. That must have been what the MRL-looking device was for. Now all we could do was stand there and pray that the undead separated as planned.

_**And did it work?** _

Surprisingly, yes it did. Major Hautu squawked into his radio for an update. I couldn't hear the response, but he soon announced that, by some miracle, the herd had definitely split. The front half was heading for the coast, and the rear half was heading here. He then ordered everyone to form a tight semi-circle around the mound. With the exception of Major Hautu's men, who carried guns, we were using knives and machetes, as well our _patus_ , _wahaikas_ **[3]** , even Harry had his great-grandpa's _tewhatewha_ **[4]**.

Major Hautu ordered his own men to seek higher ground, on the road leading up to the obelisk. He wanted them to have to best position possible in case things went wrong. He gave a strict order that his men were not to fire a single shot unless they absolutely had to in order to save someone or if the ranks were broken. And if that did happen, they were to fire slow and steady, and especially on semi-auto.

It took a while for the undead to make their appearance. Someone in the crowd called our attention to the bottom of the hill. We saw them, these shambling, growling figures. Major Hautu joined his men up above and soon gave the order to form the semi-circle. We ran to our positions, our weapons in hand.

With everyone in formation, Major Hautu gave a deafening roar, and soon we all began the _haka_ **[5]** , squatting and chanting in unison. I hadn't done one in so long, probably not since I played for my high school's football team. But it jut felt...right, you know? Oh man, I really wish someone had a camera that day. I'm sure if someone made a movie about us, or even made a documentary, and if we had used that footage...oh man that would have been a real blockbuster!

The _ora mate_ were now just arms-length away. I was the first one to deliver a blow, cracking the zombie's skull open with my weapon as I let out a bellowing roar. I didn't know where it came, but I was soon overcome with adrenaline, and some other sensation I cannot describe. Soon Harry was next and flipped his tewhatewha upside down, driving the sharpened end through the zombie's forehead, before withdrawing it and bringing the front blade end down on another defenseless dead one. And soon, we all were going at it like our lives depended on it. **[He laughs.]** Get it?

_**There's something I don't understand.** _

What's that?

_**Why form a semi-circle, and why not just charge them headlong?** _

I understand what you're saying, and yes, I was tempted to break out of formation and just go after them myself. But since most of these ora mate were fresh kills, their skulls weren't as soft, so if you were going to bludgeon them, you had to do it more than once. If you charged out there, struck one across the face, and he kept coming for you, then you may become distracted just by him. So distracted that you wouldn't notice the other ora mate coming for you. Then you would be surrounded, with no way out unless a few lucky shots with a rifle saved your ass.

That's why Major Hautu wanted us to form a semi-circle, so that if one of us had trouble killing one of them, either the person beside us or even one of Major Hautu's armed men above could help us dispatch them. I know it would have been more awesome to just charge at them with no plan, and just have at it, but that would have resulted in too many needless deaths, and Major Hautu knew this.

A couple of times I saw Mister Wanui take on two or three of them at once. He would do various martial arts moves, sometimes he would kick one in the leg to bring it to its knees before striking it across the face with his weapon. I even saw him use a dead zombie as a shield against another zombie while he attempted to strike him.

I also saw this one man to my left, I'm pretty sure he played for the All Blacks, break one of their jaws before shoving it over to Marcus Manawa for the final blow to the cranium.

It couldn't have been five minutes into the fray when Major Hautu joined us on the ground. You could hear his men from above, shouting and pleading for their commander to rejoin them. I don't know if he heard them, or if he did but chose to ignore their pleas. He just withdrew his weapon and starting swinging at the dead that came his way like the rest of us. He wrote in his book that he felt he deserved to fight among his fellow brothers than cower on higher ground. He believed that this battle needed as much manpower as possible if victory was possible. **[He smiles.]** He couldn't have been more right.

I also saw Mister Jenkins further down from me, using a sling that appeared to be handmade. Every stone he flung hit a zombie square in the forehead with surprising accuracy. Whichever ones didn't go down were stabbed in the the head.

Throughout the whole battle, every dead zombie either fell to ground and stayed there, or would collapse and tumble down the hill, sometimes knocking down whatever other zombies were in its path. This was a blessing, as that gave us a moment to catch our breaths, if only momentarily. At one point I saw head beginning to roll down the hill. I looked further down my left and saw this one guy decapitating every zombie that came his way. I swear to God I thought I heard him scream, "Time for heads to roll!" **[He snickers.]**

When it was all over, we all stood there, breathing heavily, and covered in the zombies' black gunk. A few of us looked around, just to see if we missed any. I hadn't realized that the battle of was over; I was still glancing around me, my gunk-stained _patu_ raised in defense. But soon the feeling faded, and I soon realized that we had won. After a few seconds that seemed like ages, Major Hautu raised his weapon and proclaimed in a loud voice, "The _ora mate_ are NO MORE!" We all broke out into shouts of victory and cries of joy. Some us hugged each other, others wept tears of joy. Me? I just sat there on the grass, a tired but euphoric smile glued to my face. And the best part? Major Hautu's men didn't have to fire a single shot! Out of five hundred Maori, not a single one lost that day. Not _one_!

It was truly remarkable, bloody brilliant, and I'm not just saying that because I was a participant. Why do you think a statue of three Maori warriors stand on the hill, their weapons held high in victory? Now with Auckland taken care of, we could begin to purge Wellington, and the rest of the north of the undead swine. And it would only be a short matter of time before the whole island was free of the threat of danger. Then we moved our attention to the south, and before long, we became one of the very few nations to not only purge their land of the ora mate before the conference in Honolulu, but also one of the few nations that did not have to use the Redeker Plan! **[He beams with pride, leaning back in his seat and placing his hands behind his head.]** Not bad for a group that didn't fire a shot, eh?

**[1] _Ora mate_ \- "Living dead" in the Maori language.**

**[2]- Multiple Rocket Launcher.**

**[3] _Wahaika_ \- Similar to a patu, it is a short club used for hand-to-hand combat. However, it has a notch toward the end of it, allowing the warrior wielding it to disarm their opponent.**

**[4] _Tewhatewha_ \- An ax-shaped club weapon. In the past, when engaging in tribal warfare, the Maori used the thicker straight front edge to strike their opponent, rather than the ax-like blade. This was partly because the blade was made of wood, and therefore, not sharp enough. However, non-wooden tewhatewhas are exceptions.**

**[5] _Haka_ \- A ceremonial or challenge dance usually performed by Maori men. While the dance is often considered a "war dance", it is also considered in Maori culture to be a "celebration of life" dance. Whether the former or the latter was the intention of the warriors at One Tree Hill is still unclear.**

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**I sort of feel like the description of the battle itself wasn't really in depth, or wasn't long enough. What do y'all think?**


	13. The Netherlands (Turning the Tide)

**So this one is a tad shorter than the last two, but I didn't really have much for this chapter.**

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**CIVITA DI BAGNOREGIO, VITERBO, ITALY**

**[Sitting on top of a plateau of friable volcanic tuff overlooking the Tiber River Valley, it is no mystery that this stone city served as refuge for one hundred and forty-three Italian citizens during the siege of the peninsula. Usually home to around sixty people during the summer, the autumn weather has brought the number of inhabitants down to a measly seven. One of these inhabitants is retired First Lieutenant Elia Heidebrink. The Dutchman doesn't utter a word as he ushers me into his townhouse. The open window at the far end of the living room provides a stunning view of the surrounding valley, and allows the cool autumn breeze to blow in. He sits in front of me at the table by the window, a bottle of beer in his hand.]**

You don't have to be a genius to know that the Netherlands' greatest weakness is its terrain. After all, one third of the entire country lies below sea-level, with the lowest point at just a little over six and a half meters below sea-level. I mean, it's in the name! _Nether_ -lands, as in lower lands. And because of this, if people were going to inhabit the land, something had to be done to ensure they could safely inhabit the area without the fear of a large scale natural disaster.

Our dams, dikes, and floodgates are some of the greatest achievements in human engineering, probably unrivaled by anywhere else in the world. Because of this, we were able to drain out certain areas that had previously been underwater to grow agriculture, which in turn led us to become the second largest exporter of food in the entire world! Not bad for a country of only forty-one thousand five hundred and forty-three square kilometers.

But that's not to say that we were perfect. We had our fair share of floods and storms throughout the years. The Flood of '53 was a really doozy, which made the government realize that if we were to prevent something like that from ever happening again, then the forty-year long Delta Works project **[1]** had to be precise, ingenious, and above all, efficient.

_**How was your country handling the crisis?** _

About as well as any other European nation. But what really amazed me was the lengths the rest of the continent was willing to go to restore any kind of order or maintain security. You had Russia with its decimations, France with its Strasbourg bomb, Ukraine with its chemical weapons, and then there's Denmark. Oh boy do the Germans love to talk about Denmark nowadays. You've seen the photos, right?

_**Of the Danish Massacres?** _

Yeah.

_**Yes, I have.** _

Sad shit, isn't it? Hundreds of Germans, fleeing by sea. I guess after the Danes sealed the border, the refugees had no other choice but to attempt to besiege Zealand. Copenhagen was hellbent on keeping as many Danish citizens alive and uninfected as possible, and they were not going to allow anyone in, be it Germans, Swedes, or whoever. When the refugees began trying to force their way into the country, the Danish army and navy took it upon themselves to gun down anyone who either tried to enter one of the islands or tried to climb the wall along the border...Oh shit, I've gotten off track. What were we talking about before that?

_**Your country's aquatic engineering.** _

Oh yes, thank you. Like I was saying before, those engineering marvels were some of the contributions that kept our countrymen safe. I just couldn't believe how we would end up using them when the dead overran most of the country.

The weather that day could have been better, though. A massive storm was upon us. The rain came down hard, and seemed to hit you in every direction; up, down, even sideways. The waves were choppy and high, threatening our slowly weakening aquatic infrastructure. One of my biggest fears was what might happen when we abandoned the dams for God knows how long. Would they fail, bringing gallons upon gallons of sea water into the cities and villages? Or would our non-manual computer systems still remain functional and somehow keep everything together?

_**What was your job during that time?** _

Originally, I was supposed to be in Middelburg, in the south, helping the remnants of the government establish a safe-zone and try to restore order. But suddenly, there was a change in plans, and I soon found myself being shipped further north.

Even though I was technically a soldier, I was also a combat engineer. The job that I was trained for mostly consisted of learning how to build firing positions, fortifications, and conduct demolition missions if need be. I was responsible for setting up those kinds of things during my brief tour in Afghanistan. I reasoned that was why they needed me up there. Maybe they needed someone who could help set up better defenses, or even help convert Rotterdam into a bait zone as part of the Smit Strategy **[2]**.

By the time I had reached my post, Rotterdam had already been evacuated. The navy had already evacuated whatever citizens that were left the previous night, right before the storm began to pick up. From pictures I've seen, the evacuees looked like immigrants boarding ships for the New World, standing in long lines, many of them holding luggage, waiting to board the ships while the soldiers inspected for bites or scratches.

The air force had confirmed there were two hordes approaching our position: one massive one from the east, and a smaller one coming from the north. But they were just assigned for aerial scouting; the government didn't want to risk firebombing the area.

_**Why?** _

Because if they just went crazy, destroying every aquatic structure either intentionally or accidentally, then I'm certain the entire country would've become Atlantis. But you see, I didn't find all that out until later that day...

My post was not at Rotterdam itself, but rather at Maeslantkering. It was a storm surge barrier further up the river, designed to prevent the city and surrounding areas from being effected when water levels reached a certain height. The whole the thing was controlled by a supercomputer, and the structure was one of the largest moving structures on the planet. It had only been used once before, but with the raging storm that almost seemed apocalyptic, the supercomputer had already shut the gates. The gates were high, but the water was getting so high itself I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

I met up with the commanding officer in charge of the operation. We exchanged salutes and he asked me if I was the man that the higher-ups had sent for. I confirmed, and he led me to a small boat on the river. We were taken to the very center, where the two sides came together. We were so close that you could touch them.

As I said before, at that moment I didn't understand why I was posted at this location specifically, or why we had been taken so close to the barrier, or why the air force wasn't properly utilizing its assets to attempt to neutralize the threat.

I asked the officer what we were doing out here, on a rickety boat, in the middle of one of the worst storms any of us had ever seen, with the dead approaching further downstream. What he said made my heart stop: since there was no way of overriding the supercomputer's controls, the barrier was to be partially destroyed, so that the sea would flood the river in an attempt to wash away the dead in the surrounding area and, of course, in Rotterdam further east. There were also orders to destroy the dike that lead into the Pernis neighborhood as well. The reason why they wanted someone like me was because they didn't want the structure completely destroyed by aerial missiles. They only wanted it damaged to an extent that when and if the area was ever reclaimed, repairs could be completed faster.

I tried to make him see reason, tried to tell him that the water could incapacitate the dead, sure, but not kill all of them. I argued we would probably make the situation even worse, and that operations in the future would be even more difficult, but my pleas fell on deaf ears. He instead grabbed me by the tunic, repeated the order, and told me that if I didn't comply, I would be court marshaled for insubordination.

There was another man there, another combat engineer. He introduced himself as Sergeant Becker, and that he was here to assist me in setting the charges. My hands couldn't stop shaking as we began to unpack and start to activate the charges inside the cabin of the boat. I was afraid if I slipped up, I might cause the whole boat to explode! Our explosives were more or less conventional. They were the kinds of explosives you could stick to vehicles or doors, and they were super adhesive, so even with the slick, wet metal of the gates could hold them on.

After we had evenly spread out five bombs on each gate, the boat took us back to the mainland. We boarded an awaiting chopper and began to ascend. We made sure to keep a respectable distance from the barrier as I made sure the detonator was ready. The commanding officer then gave me the order to activate the bombs. I nervously looked down at the detonator, exchanging worried glances with Sergeant Becker. He gave me this solemn nod for me to engage. I closed my eyes and held my breath before pushing the button.

**[He averts his eyes to the table, trying his hardest not to cry in front of me.]**

The blast immediately brought in the tides, gushing through the destroyed center of the foundation. It happened so fast sometimes I have a hard time remembering it. All I remember for certain is that the areas ahead of the city were flooded immensely, and the city itself took heavy damage. So much so that current construction efforts are not even a quarter completed yet. But Maeslantkering wasn't the only thing that was destroyed that day...

I never thought we would stoop that low. Gunning down refugees, using nerve gas, or even dropping a nuke is one thing, but actually pulling something like that off...If they wanted the dead gone, why didn't they just fire bomb them? I know they wouldn't be stopped completely, but at least we wouldn't have to resort to using one of our most precious and necessary national assets to flood the city.

**[He then looks out the open window, his sad eyes lost in the natural beauty outside.]**

I suppose it could have been worse. Only a small handful of other dams and other aquatic defenses were used against the dead, but the damage is still too great. From that moment on, the whole country could have been swallowed up by the sea, or annexed by the Germans postwar for all I cared. By that point, I felt like I could no longer call myself Dutch. My family were engineers by trade, so you must understand how much shame I felt. After the war, I just didn't have it in me to keep living there so I left, and probably will never go back.

But at least the politicians and generals who gave the green light were willing to openly admit their involvement, even if it meant their careers were over. They can talk about how tragic it was, or how miscalculated their hypotheses were, but it doesn't matter. After all the shit we've been through, it really makes you wonder: was it worth it?

**[1]- The Delta Works was a series of construction projects that involved the creation of multiple dams, dikes, levees, and storm surge barriers to prevent mass flooding in the southwestern part of the country.**

**[2]- The Dutch version of the Redeker Plan.**

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**I got one more for this section, and it's gonna be Australia for anyone wondering. After some consideration, I'm going to do one chapter for "Home Front USA", solely because I've given every other section a chance. See y'all next time!**


	14. Australia (Turning the Tide)

**Sorry for the long wait!**

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**CANBERRA, AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY, REPUBLIC OF AUSTRALIA**

**[Joseph "Seph" Matthews is not really the kind of man an average person would think of when they think of a president, at least not when it comes to appearance. With his tall stature, grizzled face, and optical sensor where his left eye used to be, the former general has agreed to speak with me during a brief break in his schedule. The bright sun shines through the window behind his desk, giving him an almost heavenly outline.]**

The zakus **[1]** were ripping up the eastern coast. A quarter of Newcastle had been reduced to ashes, Brisbane was experiencing a week's-long siege, and then there was the matter at Gladstone...The only thing that we had going for us was the south and the north were hardly experiencing any of the major sieges that were occurring on the eastern and western coasts. One of my advisors is from Adelaide, and the book he published shortly after my reelection victory party goes into great detail about how both the army and the civilians defended the city to the death, with only limited casualties.

You also had the hundreds booking east for the Pacific or for New Zealand. No one was directing them where to go; many just hopped into either their private crafts or anything that could float and left in a hurry.

The squadron I had deployed to Albury had just experienced a major setback, so what remained had returned to the capital to recuperate. I also had another squadron making their rounds in Canberra, ensuring that whatever zakus were left would be exterminated. Later that night, we had all gathered in the Parliament House, trying to figure out what the next course of action would be. I was exchanging ideas with the other generals, none of us agreeing with each other on how to deal with the situation. The pollies **[2]** weren't coming up with anything good either, most of them spewing the same stuff back at each other after someone else had offered something similar.

A loud whistle brought the arguing to a halt. The prime minister stood at the podium, fixing her hair before speaking. First she informed us that she had just gotten off the phone with her New Zealand counterpart, regarding the refugee crisis. She informed us that all the civilian airports and ports were to be sealed, effective immediately.

She then said that enough time had been wasted trying to contain the threat, and that now was the time for action. She said that we couldn't just stay and fight like the Maori did; the undead numbers were quickly outnumbering the living on the continent, and we needed to relocate to a more strategic location. We all knew it would be Tasmania, but we didn't say anything and let the lady continue.

The next item on the agenda was to put the South African Plan into action. Their version of Redeker was standard; only a select few would accompany the government to the safe zone, to help keep the economy and population going. The only problem was who they had in mind.

They only planned to take the highest-ranking citizens with them, the elite if you will, as well as a small pool of laborers under each person within that top class of people. We were all confused by this, because why exactly would we leave behind almost all of our fellow Aussies while the one percent got to leave and live in relative safety? The PM argued that this was so the elite could provide their "necessary managerial skills" to make the wartime economy function, and that this would be done for "the good of the people".

The ones being left behind would be rounded up and escorted to heavily fortified compounds scattered throughout the country. They had everything that they would need to survive for a substantial amount of time: food, water, medical supplies, military-grade weapons, the whole nine yards. Most of these compounds would be located outside major population centers, making the chance of large hordes of zakus being attracted to them more likely.

_**Weren't there any concerns that any survivors not in these compounds would try to break in?** _

You haven't to been any of the compounds, the ones still standing or still open to the public, have you? Those things are fucking impenetrable, almost like castles. Their walls were multiple layers of concrete, their doors stainless steel. These behemoths of structures were meant to last whoever inhabited them for years, with the only way getting in or out was through a retractable gate that would automatically shut whenever it detected a large group of zakus.

It wasn't the prime minister's idea, you know, leaving everyone behind. The idea had originally come from one of the corrupt officials, one of the men that kept our country from achieving an almost perfect corruption-free record. One of his wealthy CEO mates had privately suggested it to him, definitely a desperate attempt to save his own skin. How that bastard was able to convince the PM to go through with it is beyond my knowledge.

_**How did everyone else react to this?** _

Oh we had a fair share who were confused, if not outright stupefied. Those last ones mainly came from the top brass, like me. The pollies were either indifferent, or shocked but kept their mouths shut. Now, our government was almost squeaky clean in terms of corruption, but this plan was just sick. I know that leaving certain people behind was the only option to distract the dead, as Tasmania did not have enough legitimate living space, but this was just absurd.

I argued with the PM brutally, in front of my colleagues, but all she gave me was the same response: that this was "necessary for the good of the people". I spat back, "How the bloody hell is it necessary for the good of the people if ninety-nine percent of the people are left behind?!" She told two of her bodyguards to escort me out of the room. I soon felt myself being lead out of the room and down the hall to an empty conference room, which they proceeded to lock me in "until they figure out what to with me".

I had to get this information out somehow. The meeting was private, so no member of the media was in the chamber. I remembered that I still had my cell on me and decided to call a mate of mine who worked as a field reporter. I didn't know if was still covering the crisis, or if he was even still alive, but I figured now would be a good enough time as any. It took a few rings, but I soon felt surprised and relieved when he eventually answered.

"What the bloody fuck do you want, Seph?" he shouted into the phone. I didn't know where he was at, but I heard faint gunshots in the background. He must have been covering a siege somewhere.

"Matt, you aren't too busy, are you?" I asked jokingly.

"What do you think, arsehole?" he spat back.

"Listen to me, I got something to tell you, and you need to get this out to the masses," I replied.

**[He pauses, looking briefly at his desk before returning his eyes to me.]** A few hours had passed with no activity. The television in the top right-hand corner of the room only displayed static. I was on the verge of falling asleep when suddenly noise filled the room. I lifted my head off the table to see the television displaying chaos. There was fighting in the streets, the streets of Canberra. The tag at the bottom of the screen read: **"SOUTH AFRICAN PLAN PRIORITIZES ELITES, REST OF POPULACE TO BE LEFT TO THE DEAD", GENERAL CONFIRMS.**

I couldn't believe what I had read so I had to read it two more times just to be sure. When my brain had fully processed the text, I felt my throat tighten. _Did I cause that?_ I thought to myself.

_**It spread that fast?** _

If there's one thing that my mate has taught me over the years is that word travels fast when your in the media. And as we've seen in the past like with the infamous _War of the Worlds_ broadcast **[3]** , it does not matter if the news is real or not, it will spread like a California wildfire and it will not stop until it's reached everyone.

The footage showed soldiers and the rioters engaged in a firefight, with bodies dropping on both sides. A news van exploded, sending a few soldiers to the pavement. The protesters were throwing Molotovs and homemade bombs. A high-pressured water cannon was being used by the cops to force their attackers back. The rioters were outright ignoring the few zakus that were showing up, focusing all their energy on the government forces.

I soon heard the door open, and I turned to meet the eyes of one of my fellow generals. He told me I was needed in the main chamber immediately. He escorted...well, more like dragged me back to the main chamber, all the politicians and military high-ups still in attendance. I observed the riot on one of the laptops. The general who must have owned it pushed a button, and the news feed cut to Perth, showing a similar scene: cops and soldiers engaged in open combat with civilians. Then the computer showed Adelaide. Then Darwin. Then Sydney.

I looked around the room, noticing both military and government personnel with astonished looks as they watched reports on whatever laptops they had on hand. The PM especially looked troubled, constantly rubbing her sweaty hands.

She locked eyes with me. She then got this look in her eyes...I don't know what came over her, but I soon myself being flung to the floor, and with the prime minister's hands around my neck. A few pollies, including the governor-general who had been silent throughout the whole evening, pulled her off of me, but those few seconds in her grasp felt like days. A fellow general helped me up to my feet, but before I could collect myself, we all heard a loud _BOOM_ , and we all lost our footing.

_**Where did it come from?** _

It apparently came from somewhere in the building, but I didn't know where specifically. But soon after we heard shouting, and a parade of footsteps rapidly approaching. Before the security guards could react, a cascade of protestors came storing into the chamber, armed and angry. The guards drew their pistols, but they weren't fast enough, and their bodies hit the floor, their torsos filled with bullets and shotgun pellets.

One of the armed protestors stepped forward, this pretty beat-up guy with a torn shirt and his face covered in blood. "On behalf of the Australian people, we demand a change in your retreat plan!" he proclaimed. Everyone around me was silent, in shock over everything that was happening so fast. I don't know who said it but, one of the younger generals said, "What are your demands?"

Well, their answer was pretty straightfoward: safety, and role reversal. The fortified compounds that were originally intended for average Australians would now be occupied by the CEOs, actors, and other rich pricks who thought they were better than everyone else. As for the pollies who tried to help them? They were put in right with them, and they kicked and screamed the whole way there. Even the PM was sent there. Yeah, she was sent to the one outside Sydney, and she ended up dying there of stress.

The newly-formed coalition government consisted of the governor-general, the remaining members of Parliament, and all the top brass like me. It was then we began the evacuation plans, to quickly relocate as many blokes and sheilas as we could to the south. When we set up shop, we could then begin the process of planning for the future.

_**And that was when GUNDAM was formed?** _

Yes. Gunning Undead/Nonliving, Democracy Against Madness. A movement that would become the first step in transitioning from a commonwealth to a republic. I didn't come up with the name, though. Some bloke from Melbourne thought of it. When we had retreated south, the basic aspects of the program began to be put together by the military think-heads. Once it became a government-approved initiative, its mission was soon put into effect.

First and foremost, most of the remaining population would follow the government further south. However, a second government base of operations would be set up in Darwin in the north. This was done so the official government sanctuary would not be too overpopulated. Keep in mind that I said most of the regular civilians would be eligible to leave the mainland. But the difference was the ones that did stay were on a volunteer basis. There weren't many, but many willingly decided to stay "for the good of the country."

The second part of the plan was reorganizing the armed forces to meet the requirements for tackling the undead threat when and if the time came to liberate the country. Of course this wasn't actually implemented until after the Honolulu Conference, when we voted to go on the offensive, but it was best to see what what everyone else thought before we actually decided to do anything.

I personally oversaw the evacuation of the citizens designated for the north, and helped the military establish and maintain order during the stalemate years. When the time came to retake the continent, I spearheaded the clearing operations for the Northern Front. Once the continent had been cleared, two elections were held in the same week. The first was to determine if Australia was to remain a commonwealth of the UK, or to break off and become a full republic. It was a narrow vote, but fifty-three percent voted to transition to a representative government. After what the former government had planned to put its people through, who could blame them?

The second election was to determine the first president in Australian history. [He averts his eyes, slightly embarrassed.] I didn't want to run initially, but a bunch of my civilian and military mates felt that I would be a good candidate. They said since I "showed them the light of truth, I should be the one to guide the light of the future". **[He lets out a small chuckle.]** I just couldn't believe I won by a landslide.

**[He rises from his seat and shakes my hand.]** But I think I've said enough for now. If you will pardon me, I have some other business to tend to. but if you don't mind, I would like to talk to you more later tonight, if that is fine with you. **[I nod as we exit. He escorts me out of his office, encountering his entourage outside in the hallway. We shake hands one last time before he and his colleagues walk further down the hall. One if the capital workers escorts me back to the main foyer, thanking me for coming before I step outside into the sunlight.]**

**[1]- Australian slang for the undead during the war, named so after the undead's habit of bleeding the tell-tale black ooze.**

**[2]- Australian slang for a politician.**

**[3]- The radio broadcast of Orson Welles's _War of the Worlds_ on October 30, 1938 caused widespread panic throughout the United States, as many listeners had believed that a Martian invasion was actually taking place.**

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**So I am going to do one chapter for "Home Front USA" just for the sake of it. I'm currently working on a draft for that one, so the wait should not be too terribly long! Also I am going to do a part 2 of this (it'll be in the "Total War" section), so stick around for that!**


	15. Tennessee (Home Front USA)

**Once again, I deeply apologize for the long wait, even though I promised this one would not take as long to complete. A lot has been going on in life, so I had to put this on the back burner. But I'm not giving up on this story, oh no. I've also been having trouble on what I wanted to do with this chapter, such as what area did I want to cover. Now, I also feel that I rushed this towards the end, but let me know what you guys think (I may go back and add some more pieces later). As I've previously mentioned, this will be the only chapter dealing with "Home Front USA". Everything else from now on will deal with "ATW, AA" and "Total War". Also, see if you can figure out the "Walking Dead" reference that I put somewhere in the story! Enjoy!**

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**GATLINBURG, TENNESSEE**

**[The town in covered in a thick blanket of snow, which is much more white than last year's snowfall. The scenery is perfect, given the town's reputation as a winter resort town. The wall cut from the surrounding trees still stands around most of the town's perimeter, long after its use has been deemed obsolete. Oliver "Ollie" Wallace, formerly known as "King Oliver", agrees to speak with me over breakfast at The Pancake Pantry. While no longer a resident of this small tourist town, he often drives up here every so often to check on things. As we take our seats by the front window, a few people instantly recognize him, each person saluting him with a clenched right fist pressed against their heart. He returns a salute with a smile before taking his seat in front of me.]**

If you are curious to know, that was the salute we had back in the day. Some may view it as ridiculous, but others such as myself find it endearing. Many of the townsfolk who didn't live here during the conflict become confused when they see people do that either to me or to each other, but who cares, right?

Some might also make the case about the wall. Some people want it torn down, but I view it as a symbol of our struggle. Plus, it's even become sort of a new tourist attraction, and many travelers compare the town to a fort. In a way they are correct, as we were one of the most secure and formidable civilian fortifications not to be supplied by federal airdrops. I mean, technically you could classify us as a Blue Zone, as were the very definition of one: a zone where civilians had managed to make do with whatever refuge they could survive in. But the difference between us and places like Baton Rouge or Green Bay is that we had no method of communication. We had no working radios, civilian or military. We were essentially a subspecies of Blue Zones; completely self-reliant, and completely alone.

Life in these types of zones that were "off the grid", so to speak, were no different from the more populated and supplied sanctuaries throughout the eastern two-thirds of the country. We had to experience and suffer through the same calamities as everyone else. We had food shortages, we had failing crops, we had low morale at times. But these were considered minor problems compared to some of the more major incidents. Dodge City suffered a security breach that resulted in more than half of its refugees being wiped out, Mobile suffered an fire that either destroyed or heavily damaged several buildings. Only one safe zone resorted to cannibalism, but that was further north. A small community in Ohio, I believe it was. At least the adults had the decency to shoot the children before committing the act...

But my point is that if you were to ask anyone on the street of this town who lived here during that time what the experience was like compared to others, they would tell you that we were blessed.

_**How did your "kingdom", so to speak, come to be?** _

I guess everything has an origin, doesn't it? But before you learn how the my kingdom came to be, you must first know where I came from. I would say the virus started leaving China around the time Vanessa and I split. About four months or so after going off the grid, I was in this little ole' homeless shelter in Charlotte. I was sitting alone, eating this wretched grool I thought was oatmeal, when I overheard these two women a few tables over. I only started listening in when the younger of the two mentioned visiting her mother recently. She said that her mother had been bitten by some "crazy-ass motherfucker", as she put it, while she was working at the medical ward at UNCC **[1]**.

I didn't hear anything else about it for some time afterward. When I was seeking refuge in a storm drain under a bridge with several other vagabonds, one of the older ones was constantly complaining about a nasty-looking bite on his hand. When I asked him about it, he said a "rabid bastard" bit him when he was going through some garbage. However, I didn't make a connection until later that evening, when we were listening to a small radio one of the younger ones had with him. The report that caught my attention was one coming out of Charleston. "African rabies being passed through bites", they said. This made us wary of our bitten friend. I certainly didn't want to stick around to see what would happen, so I got up and left while everyone else slept.

I'll spare you all the specific details about what went down in Columbia. You can pretty much read about the collapse on the Internet. I essentially found myself among some other homeless folk when things went south. I will say that during the chaos, I was able to hot wire a car, so that played in my favor.

_**Did you take anyone with you?** _

Jimmy, Chuck, and Roger. I didn't have it in me to leave them. Even with the world ending all around us we needed each other. We had stuck together since I first arrived in town. They were the family I had gained since the divorce. Especially Jimmy, that funny bastard. He had this tattoo of a phoenix on his right hand that looked really cool. He always knew when to cheer you up or offer some advice.

We drove for miles, not knowing what lay ahead, not knowing who or what we would encounter on our travels. On the road, we had picked up several people along the way. The first two were two high school kids, boyfriend and girlfriend. They said their car had run out of gas, and needed a lift. I was reluctant, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt and let them tag along. They seemed a little nervous being around us at first, but that nervousness quickly faded.

Eventually we joined up with this other group in the mountains. Nothing special, only the campsite was overrun after four days. In the middle of the night, no less. Only nine people, including Roger, Jimmy, and myself, made it out alive. Chuck and the girlfriend both died at the hands of the dead.

We kept trekking for some time after that. It was the first winter, and the temperatures were dropping to unnatural levels, so needless to say, we needed to find shelter and fast. We had some basic camping supplies we had either scavenged from whatever abandoned vehicles we found, but these tents and thin sleeping bags would not be sufficeint enough to guarantee not dying in our sleep of frostbite.

**[Before I can ask him, he politely interrupts me.]** I know what you're going to ask me. Why I was "crowned" king. Well, if you're somehow wondering if I declared myself king, you're wrong.

It happened when it was just myself and the survivors of the camp massacre. It started off as a joke, to be completely honest. We were taking refugee in an abandoned day care center one night, and we all sitting in one of the playrooms, trying to stay warm. If there was something worse than waiting around for something to attack you it's the boredom. We were trying to find ways to entertain ourselves, and I happened to find a plastic crown in one of the toy boxes. The second-youngest in our group, DeSean, joked that I, "King Oliver", had found his long-lost crown. And I suppose everyone else thought it was funny so I kept the title. But I did not think much of it at first, you understand. They only called me that every so often as a joke. It wasn't until much further down the road that the use of the epitaph became commonplace.

We were up in the mountains, hiking downhill. We caught sight of the settlement a little before dusk, the outlines of the buildings only barely visible through the blowing snow and whatever small amounts of sunlight that were peaking through the gray clouds.

Just as with other small towns in zombie-infested America, Gatlinburg was overrun. Well...not overrun, per se. When we arrived, there a small handful of them roaming around in the streets, a few in whatever buildings whose doors were left wide open. We dispatched them easily and efficiently. We held up in one of the rental cabins that overlook the town. That served as our primary base of operations while we conducted clearing efforts and supply runs.

**[A young waitress brings us some hot chocolate before we place our orders. Mr. Wallace continues once we are alone again.]**

And as you can tell, there was no definitive way to completely secure all of Gatlinburg proper. We started at the South entrance, that leads into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on US Highway 441, and ran the wall around the tree line, and then cutting through the point where Parkway and River Road merge before heading back to the starting point. To put it simply, only the downtown area was secure. And let me tell you, getting the wall up was no easy task.

_**Why is it that Gatlinburg had no contact with the federal government?** _

We were completely isolated, no connection with the outside world. Most of the safe zones were cities that were well known and had a relatively high population before the outbreak, such as Baton Rouge or Omaha or even Macon, Georgia. The survivors there had at least a radio that could connect to the federal broadcast stations in the west. Before the war, Gatlinburg only had a population of roughly four thousand people. Now, I try to reason that the government had plenty of things to worry about, with the other zones, and clearing out the land west of the Continental Divide. I completely understand that. But at that time, I don't think any of us really cared that we were on our own. We just happy for sleeping in actual beds and using actual toilets.

Once we had gotten a good night's rest, we had decided that the next course of action was try to secure the town, or maybe set up traps at a certain point. As the weeks passed, and the town became more secure, and the dead were showing up less and less every day thanks to our traps we had scattered throughout the forest.

Whatever wood wasn't being used for fires was being used to erect the perimeter wall. Completely encircling the town was not an easy task, especially with zombie attacks or sightings being as common as our bowel movements. We tired ourselves trying to get it up as quickly as possible, but in the end, we could all sit back and marvel at the fruits of our labor.

Naturally, over time, more people started showing up, mostly either alone or in small groups. But eventually, it got to the point where the question was asked: now that the community is growing, who is going to lead us?

There were some admirable candidates besides me. One woman was a former sergeant in the Navy, another man had been a member of the Peace Corps. But despite the odds, I was chosen.

_**Why?** _

**[He shrugs.]** I still don't know, man. I kept insisting that I was not the ideal person to lead, but Jimmy, my loyal friend and fellow hobo, said, "Long live King Oliver!", taking a knee for emphasis. This embarrassed the crap out of me, but soon a bunch of others took a knee, forming that salute that we were discussing just a moment ago. But regardless, I "put on the crown", so to speak, and soon found myself the chosen leader of a group of one hundred and forty-three people.

_**Now, was there any conflict with other groups?** _

Not many, praise God. Thankfully, my reign was peaceful and prosperous for the most part. The scouts would often run into a few hostile travelers, or even a quisling every blue moon, but the people that we encountered on supply runs were usually friendly.

_**What about food? Surely trying to obtain some was difficult to some capacity?** _

Meat wasn't a huge problem. Most of my people had some hunting experience thankfully. Only problem was that due to animals running whenever the undead were near, sneaking up on them and taking a shot was tricky. That's when our resident blacksmith began making traps for bears, deer, and even foxes. Now, I will say that this did not always work; sometimes we were lucky if we got a full sized buck once every ten days or so. During one summer, it got so bad that we had to resort to shooting birds and squirrels. Have you ever had roasted crow? **[I shake my head.]** Good, I hope you will never have too.

The first winter was especially cruel. Most of the animals were in hibernation, and the birds had all flown south. The shortage got so bad we had to resort to consuming some of the creatures from the aquarium. We had decided to save most of the smaller fish for our aquaponics operations, and instead eat the larger aquatic beasts: the sharks, the stingrays, the penguins...[He pauses. There is no emotion on his face, but I can clearly sense his discomfort.] Have you ever heard a penguin squawk in pain? It's an God-awful noise, probably one of the worst I have ever heard in my life, and hopefully I will never have to hear it again. Every time I come back up here, I pay a visit to the aquarium, but I linger the most in the penguin section. Sometimes I'll just stand there, staring down at the almost empty tank, watching as the two or three penguins that are still in captivity swim around on quasi-empty stomachs due to fish shortages.

But when it came to crops, however, that was an entirely different situation. Other than whatever perishables that hadn't expired or rotted away in storage in the restaurants and hotels, we were basically starving. But one of my personal guards, Arturo, had been a professor of agriculture in Memphis. If he had lived to see the end of the conflict, he should have been given a medal or something for his ingenious.

Our primary method of agriculture was thanks to aquaponics. It was an ancient form of cultivation that had been used by the Aztecs. How it works is you put fish into a tank of water, and then put plants into the frames above it. With the roots sitting in the water, they absorb nutrients from fish waste. It was ingenious, and it kept us relatively well-fed and well-stocked.

We used fish from both the nearby creeks and rivers, as well whatever fish were still alive in the aquarium. Flounders were the major one, with clownfish coming at a close second. We had multiple aquaponics stations scattered throughout the town, mainly in basements or back rooms of public buildings.

When it came to power, we relied mainly on backup generators and solar power panels we had set up at various spots around town. We were thankful that a few of our people were engineers, so we soon had power in no time flat.

Over time we also acquired several different livestock. Poultry and pigs, mostly. And horses, oh Lord how we loved our horses. I think the horses outnumbered all the pigs we had in the entire community. We used those for our primary transport, especially in the winter, when it was too dangerous to drive on the winding mountain roads. We still used cars, but only for long range supply runs and whatnot.

I realize that I haven't talked a lot about how I ran things as "king". Well, to put it simply, I considered myself a laid-back sort of ruler. As long as everyone did their job and treated each other respectfully, then there were no problems. I simply played the part because people enjoyed it. Plus "King Oliver" has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

_**Did you meet or have any contact with any other settlements, since Honolulu was unreachable?** _

Only two, only they weren't cities or towns. The first was this small high school, just thirteen miles north of us. A group of well-rounded teenagers, most of them students of said high school, had formed a wall out of buses and other materials around the main building. I visited it a couple times throughout the stalemate years, and I was very impressed with how they made the best of things. They had converted some of the classrooms into personal chambers, fully furnished. They had also come up with a system of cisterns and even figured out a way to keep the toilets running.

Despite the fact that they served as a crucial trading partner throughout the stalemate years, our first encounter with them was quite the skirmish. It was foggy that day, so much so that you could barely see ten feet ahead of you. Their scouts had mistaken mine for the damned, and one of them tried to kill one of mine. Thankfully the fog obscured his vision, as my scout only received a bullet through the arm.

_**Were you nervous about these people?** _

I had my doubts, but I like to see the good in people. I told my scouts to inform the other group that we would be willing to schedule a meeting. When word came back, Sevierville had agreed to meeting the next day at noon in their sanctuary.

Getting there was a problem, however. Neighboring Pigeon Forge was overrun, and the roads were often blocked by abandoned cars that made it difficult to drive through. And even if we could drive through, there was always the worry of when a truck or sedan would suddenly come to a halt because the tank ran dry. And not to mention the snow and ice that caused the asphalt to freeze.

The second sanctuary was a fortified hotel. The survivors there had managed to somehow clear it out, and fortify most of the lower level windows to make the place impenetrable. It was thin and a couple of stories high, so they didn't have to put as much effort in fortifying it.

The whole purpose of the meeting was to ensure our survival. We knew that with no assistance from the federal government, we had to rely on each other for support. It was then that we drew up an agreement between our respective communities.

_**The Wallace-Crane-Burrows Compact?** _

You're a smart man. The compact states that all three communities would trade supplies, food, weapons, anything that we needed to make ends meet. My kingdom specialized in weapons. A machine shop/blacksmith station was set up downtown, where all kinds of knives, bludgeons, and even spears were produced. And the joint is still going strong! **[He gestures to the shop across the street. A sign that reads "Hal's Handmade Knives" sits above the store. Two customers are seen exiting the store with their purchases, holding the door for an older woman to enter.]**

Our melee weapons became a popular commodity amongst the communities. We never attempted to make firearms, but we did corner the market on making cartridges in the back of the machine shop. We basically just recycled spent casings and then using assembling them with freshly made bullets and powder. I don't mean to brag, but we were, economically speaking, the most prosperous of the three communities. And on a side note, it sort made me popular with my subjects. [He warmly chuckles.]

_**But it wouldn't be for a while until your first encounter with human threats, correct?** _

Yes, that's right. The first encounter we had with these people was the fourth summer after the Panic. There had not been any major undead sightings in the area. A few random loners here and there, but no large groups, so that was a good thing.

Human threats weren't something any of us didn't know anything about. We were aware of the possibility of coordinated attacks from the living just as we were aware of the possibility of an undead siege. I once heard about a huge conflict on the coast, either in Virginia or somewhere near the DC area. Apparently there was a major conflict between several large groups of survivors. A few against one group that was terrorizing the rest, both sides experiencing mass casualties. I believe there's a documentary that will be released soon based on that, with people from both sides of the conflict discussing their experiences.

Sure there have been cases of marauders and what not, but most people stuck to semi-self-sufficient safe-zones or sanctuaries if they could help it. This one group we faced was different. I mean their end goal was the same as any other outside group, but the main difference was how they presented themselves to us. Instead of just going in guns blazing, we willingly let them in.

The first time we met them came less than week after. A bunch of them showed up at the front gate one afternoon, making a bunch a racket and demanding to speak to who was in charge. I was summoned from my personal chambers and escorted toward the entrance. I was led up a ladder to the observation deck, and looked below to see fifteen people with their eyes directed at me.

There were thirty of them, all armed. There were also two Humvees, with one the men manning the .50 cal. They wore military fatigues, clearly army men. One of the older ones stepped forward, introducing himself as Major Holland. He demanded that we open up so they could "establish base camp and get in touch with top brass".

_**Didn't that seem suspicious?** _

Originally, yes. I mean, if they were here to establish a base camp, was the country being liberated? Was this lone unit of men going to help clear the area? But, their claims seemed legitimate. After all, it had bee quite some time since we had seen anyone who was even the simplest form of federal authority. And so, I ordered my men to open the gate and let the gentlemen inside. That was our first big mistake.

They immediately set up shop in the hotel that my guards and I were staying in. We gave them whatever they asked for: food, water, clean clothes, you name it. Major Holland thanked us for our hospitality and cooperation, and assured us that the area would be "fully swept clean" within the coming months. But there were a few things that struck me as strange.

_**Like what?** _

Well for starters, they requested that all our weapons be turned in at the hotel. One of the storage rooms was to be converted to an armory where the majority of weapons would be kept. The reason for this, they said, was that since we were now under "federal protection", we no longer needed to bear arms while we are inside the walls. And if we wished to go beyond the walls for whatever reason, we would be allowed to check out whatever weapons we desired to take. However, they had to be returned immediately after stepping foot back into the community.

Many were skeptical of this, especially my older subjects, but they eventually relented, stating that it only seemed "logical". That was our second big mistake that would later come to bite us in the ass.

At that time, we thought we had gotten lucky. We didn't realize that we had actually let wolves into the henhouse. Oh what fools we were. What a fool was I...

But over time, that hope began to wane. Every day that passed, me and my people hoped that a large convoy or something would roll up to our gates. We hoped that we could finally rest easy knowing that the country was being reclaimed by the living. But as summer passed and the autumn rolled in...

Jimmy and I were talking one evening in my personal chambers. He expressed his concerns about the soldiers, and why was it taking so damn long for the others to get here. I tried to be as logical as possible with my response. I told my friend that given our location in the mountains, and with the cold weather beginning to take a footing in the region, transportation must be difficult. Or maybe they were caught up in some other operations far away from here, either trying to take down hordes or establish more bases with other communities.

"Do you know if they have established bases with our neighbors?" Jimmy asked. I couldn't believe I let that slip past me! We didn't even bother to ask our trading partners if they had similar events taking place. We communicated through letters, you see, as radio communication was pretty much out of the question, as I will remind you. And given that it took a while for us to receive and send back letters to the community we are communicating with, our hands were tied. I told my friend that I would simply talk to the Major and try to get some answers. Jimmy just shrugged and said, "Good luck, Your Majesty."

I left my chambers and went to the room where the men had set up. I told the man on guard that I wanted to speak with the Major, but the guard wouldn't let me pass. The Major must have heard us, because no less than five seconds later he opened the door and told the guard to stand down. He invited me in and asked what was on my mind. I asked him straight forward what was taking so long, and would we able to see more military units moving in. Major Holland assured me that he and his compatriots were doing all that they can, and that clearing areas was tricky, and linking up with other isolated pockets of soldiers that didn't make it past the Rockies was even more tricky if communications weren't set up. He also said that he had been communicating with his superiors through the radio that he was currently in possession of. He didn't look me in the eye as he explained himself. Instead, he pretended to look over some papers or fiddle with the radio.

Looking back, maybe they might not have been actual military. They could have just been some ordinary men who happened to pick up some army fatigues and guns off some dead soldiers. Or maybe they were actual soldiers, but had went AWOL and didn't follow the high command westward. To this day I don't know, and will probably never will.

_**Did you do anything?** _

I grabbed his radio before he could do anything else with it. Before the Major could grab it back from me, I made a startling discovery: the radio was fake! I didn't know if it was a prop or what, but nothing worked, no lights flickered, nothing! He straight lied to my face without a care. I started to question him about why did he have a fake radio and claimed to be in contact with the government or whoever the hell he claimed he was talking to, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he rose from his seat, looked me dead in the eye...and made a lunge for me. I was quicker however, and bolted out the door, knocking over the guard outside in the process.

I ran outside into the cold night. I didn't;t know what I was doing; the adrenaline was pumping so fast I wasn't thinking about a specific place I wanted to go, but I had to tell someone about this.

By chance, I saw Jimmy and a few other walking down the street. I practically screamed that the men were lying, and that they probably weren't soldiers at all. My yelling must have woken some people up, as lights began to turn on, doors started opening, and people began asking about what the hell was going on. I explained everything, and the crowd gathering in the streets was mortified.

**[He pauses. It becomes evident that his reminiscing of this particular event is not pleasing.]**

Before I knew it, Major Holland had me by my hair, with his pistol pressed firmly against the back of my skull. He shoved me to my knees, and his men readied their weapons. "You people need to understand something," he announced firmly, "we are here to ensure that this town is formidable against the rotten pieces of undead shit. Interference with this goal is futile, and will not be tolerated at any level." I looked around at my people; most had their eyes locked on the Major, while others looked at me. I thought at that moment I was going to die. I shut my eyes and breathed in what I thought would be my last breath alive, when the Major let go of me.

I opened my eyes, confused. "Lieutenant Calgary," said the Major, "set an example." Before any of us knew it, one of his men opened fire, and to my right, I saw nine of my friends collapse in a bloody heap. The bald and buff lieutenant then aimed at the heads of the ones who were still conscious and put them down. A few women screamed in horror, others simply stood there shocked and mouths open agape.

"Maybe now you people will understand the situation at hand. We aren't going anywhere, so get used to us. Roll call at 0700." And with that, the Major put away his gun and started to return to the hotel, his men splitting up to either follow him or returning to their posts. The ones that died who had loved ones or close friends came running over to them, some cradling their dead bodies while they wept. I slowly walked over to them, and I almost puked when I saw the first body staring up at the sky: Roger. Thankfully, he has been shot in the head during the initial slaughter, so at least he died a quick and painless death. But regardless, that didn't change the fact that one of my friends, one of my closest associates was now dead before.

I got the worst from Jimmy. Even to this day I can still hear his words echo in my head when I try to sleep: "You failed your wife, and now you've failed us!" Now that...That got to me. I didn't say anything else to anyone. I just slowly turned around and walked away.

I felt like shit, like a failure. It wasn't long before I began to question my role in all that. What I was doing, and what good was it doing for the community? I confined myself to my chambers for a week, not speaking a word to anyone, with the exception of the occasional thanks when my meals were brought to me. I would watch out my window and watch as my people tried to pick up the pieces. At one point I even considered leaving the community, and passing on the "crown" to someone else, in a manner of speaking.

They wanted revenge, payback. The only problem was that we had no idea where these men had come from. Their one distinct advantage was their lack of a primary base of operations. Every time my scouts were out on a mission of theirs, they would search high and low, but to no avail.

But this would not last forever. One day, Roger and his men returned, with both satisfaction and determination plastered on their faces. They informed me that they had located the primary base of operations.

_**Were the other two communities aware of this?** _

No, I wanted to keep it that way.

_**Why do you say that?** _

Because if I dragged them into this conflict, then that would be even more deaths on my conscience. I wanted to end this feud as quickly, and more importantly as bloodless, as possible. My people wanted their freedom back, and I wanted these men out of my kingdom.

Eventually Jimmy came to see me. He said he felt awful about what he had said earlier, and wanted to seek forgiveness. We made up, and started talking about what we were going to do to get everything back on track. He suggested that someone should sneak out when Holland's men weren't looking and go get help. I shot down that plan immediately. I reiterated that I wanted to leave the other two communities out of this. And I also didn't want him risking his life in trying to do so. I suggested maybe we can organize a plan to overthrow the group from within, maybe have some people take out the guards, then sneak into the armory and take Holland by surprise.

"And what if it fails?" Jimmy asked. "What if we get caught? I'll tell you what will happen, Ollie: they'll kill us all. Or maybe they'll just kill us two." I said we would talk about it more tomorrow, and that we just needed to sleep on it. It was still so much to take in, given everything that had happened up until that point. We bid each other good night and we retired to our rooms. Or at least I thought both of us did, anyway.

Morning came not long after. Roll call occurred as usual. Everyone gathered in four lines in the street, while I performed the roll call. The Major and his men were present as usual. As I went down the list, I got to Jimmy's name. I called his name, but got no response. I called again, but all I received was silence. Everyone started looking around, and I soon felt the Major inches from my face.

"What the hell is going on? Where is your friend?" he asked, his eyes bearing into my face. I reluctantly looked at him and said I don't know. I tried to say that maybe he just slept in, but soon Holland dispatched two of his men to go knock on Jimmy's door. They returned with no Jimmy in tow.

One of his other men reported back saying that one of the horses was gone. I soon felt the Major grab me by the collar of my tunic. "All right, Your Highness, here's what's going to happen: Lieutenant Calgary is going to take you somewhere to have a little chat, maybe try to see where you friend ran off to." The aforementioned lieutenant led me away from the others. I spent the next six hours in a locked motel room, tied to a chair, my nose broken and face swollen. Despite telling the lieutenant that I didn't know a thing about where Jimmy might have run off to, he said I would be held in here for the time being.

I passed out from exhaustion. But When I later came to, the sun had set, and I could hear commotion coming from outside. I heard shouts, gunshots. I soon heard footsteps rushing toward the door. Soon, Arturo burst in, rifle in hand. He untied me and informed me that Jimmy had returned, and had apparently brought back up. I was handed a pistol and I followed him downstairs, to an all-out war in the streets. Holland's men were engaged in a firefight between my people, and troops from the other two communities.

I spotted Jimmy taking cover behind a garbage can, trying to reload his AK. I ran out toward him, despite Arturo's efforts to hold me back. I miraculously reached him without being grazed or outright shot. We didn't say anything to each other. We just gave each other curt nods before returning to battle. I was able to kill Lieutenant Calgary. Got him with a shot to the head. **[He grins with reminiscent nostalgia.]**

The firefight lasted about ten minutes. No fatalities on our side, praise God. And all except the Major himself were dead.

_**What happened to him?** _

At that moment none of us were sure. It seemed that he had just vanished during the gun fight, without being seen by anyone. We searched high and low for him, but he was nowhere to be found. But it wasn't until later that night I got my answer. Jimmy and I wanted accompany the troops who came from the hotel safe-zone, to personally thank their leader for offering his services to us.

We normally didn't send people out past dark, but since the dead were starting to freeze in their spots, we felt it was safe enough to travel in the cold darkness. At one point, we came to a stop so some could relieve themselves. I was among those people, but I went out further out into the forest than the others. This was stupid, but I just wanted a place where I could have some privacy. It was near a small cliff, were if you looked hard enough, you could see the outline of the moon through the thick polluted sky.

After doing my business, I nearly jumped out of my skin when someone tackled me to the ground. I couldn't see who it was in the darkness, as well as the fact snow was covering my eyes, but I knew who it was.

The Major got a few good punches in before I got in a good one to his throat. He struggled for air, as I got to my feet. He lunged for me, and we were on the ground once again. We tussled for a good minute or so, before Holland had me pinned to the ground, his hands wrapped firmly around my throat. I tried with all my remaining strength to get him to let go, whether it was hitting him or trying to scratch his eyes, but it was practically useless. Just when I thought I was about to die in the snow, a savior came to my rescue. Jimmy wrestled with the major for only a few seconds before...[He pauses, looking down at his half-empty mug.]

They were too close to the edge. Neither of them screamed as they went down the cliffside, but I surely did. I looked over the edge, trying to spot them in the darkness, but alas, they were gone. I tried to listen for sounds, like a grunt, or a large thud, or just anything that would indicate they had reached the bottom, or at least a solid part of the cliff. But I got nothing in response.

**[He takes a long sip from his mug.]** I held a funeral in his honor in the coming days. There seemed to be no way that anyone could have survived that. We all grieved for Jimmy's loss, but we also celebrated the Major's defeat. After the service, many of my subjects came up to me, expressing their condolences. But what many of them did next shocked me: they said that they don't blame me for everything that had happened. They said that they were just as to blame for the misfortunes we suffered under those men. The soon saluted, with a collective "Long live the king!"

Despite that one tragic episode, not a single human threat ever crossed us again. Throughout the remainder of my reign, I no longer felt like a failure. I felt like...I had a purpose. Even after we were officially liberated by the actual American army, I still felt like I had performed my duty in keeping the rest of my people safe. I felt like a real king. And I owe it to Jimmy.

To this day I still do not know what became of him. I have entertained the notion that he might still be alive somewhere, if he survived that fall. I have tried to search for him whenever I am not too busy, but alas, all my attempts at finding him have proven futile. I couldn't search for his body afterward; the damned were everywhere, and I could not risk being found. But, even if he is still out there somewhere, I hope with all my heart that he is doing all right.

**[At this point, a different waiter brings us our food. His dark, thick beard completely shields his mouth, and his equally dark hair is tied up in a bun. As he sets my plate in front of me, I notice a tattoo on his right hand: a phoenix. I look up to him, but his eyes are instead focused on my present company. Even under the beard, I swear I can see a warm smile on his face as he walks away from our table. Thankfully, my host fails to notice what I had noticed.]**

**[1]- University of North Carolina at Charlotte.**

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**Again, the last portion (the battle and whatnot) seems a bit minimalistic, but I was rushing to get this chapter posted because it has been so long since my last update. But regardless, let me know what you think! Also be sure to stick around for the jam-packed "Around the World, And Above" and "Total War" chapters!**


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